Midoriya Collection
by vandalvagabond
Summary: Izuku does have a Quirk of his own. It's called "Inheritance." Unfortunately for him, his inheritance comes not from those around him but from a world far, far away...
1. Chapter 1

_2184.7.19_

Midoriya Izuku stared at the doctor in confusion.

The reason for this was simple: the doctor had just declared that he lacked the evolution evidence and the lack of visible quirk activation in his age to support that Izuku had a quirk.

This was where the confusion set in.

Midoriya Izuku knew that he had a quirk. Or quirks, if he wanted to be more precise. The doctor's declaration, however, stunned him with the casualness and the callousness. So when he came home, the night came, and it was time for him to sleep, he slept and dreamt.

And in his dream, he met his team.

"W-Why was he so mean?" Izuku asked, sitting in the lap of a foreign woman whose face he knew not but whose goal aligned with his; when he first met her in his dream two years ago, he declared that he would be a hero, and she told him that she was a hero. She said that if he wanted to be a hero, then she would support him.

Despite the helmet and black spandex suit, she was caring if a bit silent.

"Because he thought that you were useless," Alexander replied as she stroked his hair. "People are like that. If your perceived usefulness falls in their eyes, then they will ignore you."

"B-B-But that's not right!" Izuku protested.

"The world is never right," she agreed. "But it is the way it was, has been, and will be forever."

Izuku gritted his teeth and pouted. "I want to be a hero."

"You can," she asserted.

"But how? You heard the doctor. I don't have a quirk I can use."

Alexandria paused for a second before she lifted him up and turned him around. She then set him down in front of her. The black background that was always present in this dream gave away to night scene of a foreign city, and Izuku watched another Alexandria fought against a giant.

The terrible giant laid waste to the city, directing tidal waves from the sea into washing away the foundations of civilizations without a care. Izuku watched with wide-eyes as Alexandria dove in and attacked the giant with her fists.

She flew so fast that he couldn't see her. She struck so hard that he was awed by her.

"Will I be like you and All Might?" he asked out of nowhere, still watching Alexandria fight this monster with many, many other heroes.

Alexandria, the one in his dream and not the fight he was seeing, chuckled as she ruffled his hair. "Don't be like me. Be like that All Might you always talk about."

And then he woke up.

**-VVG-**

_2184.7.22_

The day after, Izuku walked to home from school. He had been thinking about what Alexandria told him. Why couldn't he be like her? He saw what she did. She was a hero. In fact, she was the hero of heroes if how she ordered people was anything. She was nice and listened to what he said. She never-.

"Ah!"

Izuku stopped and looked around. Someone was in pain.

"Stop it-!" It was soon followed by cackles.

The voice was coming from the park! Izuku's legs threw him across the road and into the park before he could even properly think about his actions, and he saw horrified him.

Kacchan, his friend, and two others, was bullying another kid! Izuku quickly ran around them and skidded to a stop in front of the bullied kid while facing Kacchan. "Kacchan, stop bullying him!" he shouted.

"Ah? What are you doing here, Deku?" Kacchan drawled with one half-lidded eye.

"You can't bully people, Kacchan!" Izuku tried again, but his legs and arms shook.

"I'm just telling the idiot behind you that he can't do shit, Deku," he replied.

"B-But you can't!"

"And what are you going to do about it?" Kacchan growled as he held his hands up and sparks and pops erupted. Kacchan's two friends followed Kacchan's example and used their Quirks. One grew wings from his back and the other grew whips from his hands. "You don't even have a Quirk, Deku!"

Izuku gritted his teeth and stood still, not moving out of Kacchan's way.

Kacchan's face morphed into a furious scowl. "You're not gonna move?!" he shouted. Izuku refused to move. "THEN DIE!"

Kacchan ran up to him and punched him with an explosion!

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut and …

…

Nothing happened?

Well, there was a smoke in his face, but nothing happened.

As the smoke cleared, Izuku saw the confused look on Kacchan's face.

"The fuck?" he growled. "DIE!" And punched again.

Again, Izuku felt nothing.

Oh, nevermind. He moved back an inch.

"DEKU! You LIAR!" Kacchan roared as he took a step back. "You have a Quirk!"

"I-I-I never s-said I-I didn't…" Izuku stuttered.

"...!" Kacchan growled before turning away. "Let's just fucking go. I ain't gonna waste anymore time on the dipshit behind Deku." He stopped and then pointed at Izuku and also glared. "I'm also going to get you back for that, Deku! No one lies to me and gets away with it!"

"B-But I didn't l-lie…" Izuku mumbled.

That night as he slept, Izuku came to his dream and found Alexandria looking out towards something in the black expanse that was his dream.

"Alexandria-san!" he called out as he ran up to her.

Alexandria looked over her shoulder. "Ah, Izuku," she greeted. Just as usual, she didn't smile. "I see that you're using my power to defend others."

Izuku froze at her words, but had done so in the middle of running. He tumbled forward, rolled, and then came to a stop on his chin in front of her. "Ow."

Alexandria chuckled.

He slowly got up. "I-I'm using y-your power?" he asked tentatively.

"Yes," she replied with a hum. "Invincibility." A memory that wasn't his played like a video in front of them, showing Alexandria taking a bullet to the forehead, only for the bullet to scrunch up and fall off. "Flight." Alexandria flew around in another video. "And Strength." The last video showed her punching the same hydrokinetic giant and sending it skidding back. Then the videos closed all at once. She turned to look at him fully. "You may not have a normal Quirk, Izuku, but you can be a hero."

He stared at her for a few moments before he felt his cheeks getting wet. He quickly wiped them. "T-Thank you."

She hummed.

He didn't know it at the time, but the dream came to an end and he would never see her again. Only her power remained for him to remember her by.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Hello, y'all.**

**First off, thanks for review-supports, favs, and follows. It does help me know that the direction I am taking the story is a good one as well as one that my audience is eager to read.**

**Second, answering some questions:**

**xfel: He will get more powers.**  
**Rest: Alexandria's thinker power will be shown but it will come under "stress."**

* * *

Being a child, Izuku could not properly say what he felt. He didn't have the prior experience nor the maturity to help him express him. For him, Alexandria's sudden disappearance from his mind would be the first of such experiences for him - and perhaps, it would be the most powerful experience he would have. For him, Alexandria had been the mentor a hero needed.

Smart, caring, silent, cold, and powerful. She told him the truth about the world yet urged him to fight against it because it was what he wished for. She was there to help him talk about things he never talked with his mother about, no offense to Inko. It was just that Inko did not understand Izuku's drive but Alexandria did. And Izuku would forever regret not asking his first mentor's name.

Regret was one word he did know how to say and express, and he did.

But there were other emotions and feelings Izuku had. Some could not expressed without words, and there were some that he didn't know how to express.

Loneliness.

Sadness.

Anger.

Ultimately, it was a regret that would haunt him for years to come, because he felt that he wasted his mentor's time before she disappeared.

To that end, Izuku applied himself whenever possible. He wanted to show Alexandria, if she ever saw him again, that he hadn't been a waste of time. That he hadn't been just charity that would go to waste.

He was worth something, that she wasn't wrong to tell him that he could be a hero!

At first, it started with simple duties like homework and housework. He made sure he got all the answers correct, no matter how long it took. He made sure that his mom didn't have to focus waste her time doing little things like dishes when he could do them.

More than that, he applied himself. He didn't wallow in his room doing nothing. He made notes of his power, thought of ways to improve them, and watched videos of heroes who had similar power as him - like All Might! - and learned from their moves.

And then when he turned nine, he dreamed.

* * *

**2188.2.19**

"Heya."

Izuku, so used to spending hours by himself in this dark expanse, jolted and scrambled back as he screamed in panic.

Then he noticed that there was a … really pretty onee-san? "H-Hello?" he asked. It was only then that he noticed her outfit. Or rather, costume. Outlined in purple but mostly black with a single domino mask on her face, she was a blonde foreigner who looked nothing like Alexandria.

"Who are you?" she asked. He opened his mouth to talk but stopped when she held up her hand. "Actually, you don't have to. Your name is Midoriya Izuku, aren't you?"

He stared at her with wide eyes and open mouth. "H-How did you know that?!" he squealed unintentionally, and then blushed when he realized what he sounded like just then.

She giggled. "Name's Tattletale, and I'm a psychic."

Izuku's mouth opened with a pop of "oh."

Then a moment of silence.

"Why does Alexandria consider you so … valuable, hmm?"

Immediately, Izuku's awe gave away to desperation.

"Y-You know Alexandria-san? Can you tell me where she is?!"

The girl smirked. "Why should I?" she asked. "It's not like I gain anything out of it."

Izuku stared at her as his mind began to process. The way she talked about Alexandria wasn't like how he talked about All Might or even how other strangers in Musutafu talked about All Might. There was a bit of a sneer and -.

"Yup."

Shit. She's a psychic.

"Bad Izuku. No cussing," she chided playfully.

"... If you can read my mind, then you know what I can do, right?" he asked.

Tattletale looked over him for a second before she grinned. "How about this? I will tell you everything that's wrong with your world, and if you agree to be a hero still, then I will answer you. How about that?"

He hesitated. "W-W-Why would you want to do that?"

"Because I think heroes and villains are both stupid."

Those words struck him like a sledgehammer. It tore him apart with confusion and yet it made him curious. And a little outraged.

"T-That's not true! Heroes save people!"

"And villains only want to live. Why are there no heroes to save them?"

He didn't know what to say to that.

A hero … for the villains? That made no sense.

"Of course, it makes sense. Villains, wherever you go, just want to do what they want to do."

"But they steal and hurt other people!"

"People who neglected them," she shot him down. "People who ignored them. People who looked down on them."

Izuku flinched. They … sounded a lot like what people did to him when they thought he was quirkless.

"You know just how it must feel… to be a villain, don't you?"

"I-I'm not a villain!"

"You were considered powerless," she snickered. "They looked down on you. I know that you know that there are people who have a hard time just because they have different appearances. Isn't that wrong?"

"Of course, it's wr-!"

"Then you agree with me in saying that the society who makes their life hard is wrong? And the heroes who uphold that society… is wrong?"

Izuku's mouth dropped open and then closed. Then opened and closed again.

"N-No, no! Y-You're only looking at one s-side!" he protested. "There are j-just simply b-bad p-peop-!"

"No one's born bad, kid," she sneered at him suddenly. "I'm a villain, but I never hurt an innocent."

He stared at her incomprehensibly. "But why are you a villain?"

She stared at him for a few moments before smiling. "Because I just wanted to live."

Again, he stared at her in confusion. "But that makes no sense! If you become a hero-!"

"Then the man who saw my power would have kidnapped me before I could do much, and then I would be drugged-" he flinched. "-beaten-" he looked down. "-and then finally, chained." He didn't know when she came to stand right in front of him but she had. "And I would be forever enslaved until my usefulness ran out. Then I would be killed and finally thrown out with the wastes." She knelt in front of him and looked at him in the eyes. "Was it so wrong for me to want to live?"

"... No," he sniffed.

"Do you still want to be the hero… where someone like me disappears, never to see daylight again?"

Izuku looked down at this feet and -.

Everything slowed down. He could think faster.

So he thought. He thought about Tattletale's accusations, about how she talked to him, and the ideas that she was leading him into.

He knew that bad things happened. He had done enough hero and Quirk research to know that heroes didn't always make it in time. He also knew that there were Quirks that people simply did not like to be around because those who possessed them had been twisted into inhumane forms that made most mutant Quirks seem tame.

But still…

"No."

He pulled his head up and saw Tattletale's victorious smirk slowly turn to a blank look.

"It is not the fault of society that bad people exist. They could have done good and showed the world that they could be heroes too. Many villains chose to be bad. People want to be heroes and many do become heroes. Just because a minority of the people turned out bad, it doesn't make everyone bad."

Tattletale looked at him with a penetrating stare before smiling.

"I think you're ready for my curse."

His eyes widened as the dream began to end. He could tell it by the whitening at the edges of his vision.

"Wait, what happened to Alexandria?!" he shouted as he lunged for her.

And he woke up like that, reaching out to a phantom he would never see again.

Izuku fumbled with his words as his half-open eyes tried in vain to shut again, but instinctively knew from the sunlight shining through the curtains that he couldn't go back to sleep. Not when he had class to attend.

"Augh," he groaned as he fell back to his bed.

Then he rolled off of it because it was time to wake up.

-VVG-

The thing about having flight, super speed, super strength, and low-scale invincibility was the fact that in his world, he couldn't use them. Well, Izuku CAN use them but it would make the teachers angry, the principal angry, the police officers angry, and mom unhappy.

So, he could use them but he wouldn't use them.

Unfortunately for this new power, there was no off button.

Izuku had the unfortunate chance of looking at a random stranger wearing a clean business suit. **[Is a closet pervert.]**

"Huh?"

**[Likes to **** while **** with a woman's **** and -]**

"NO NO NO NO NO-!" Izuku shouted as he ran away. He turned a corner and the whispering stopped. He let out a sigh of relief and -.

Then he saw someone else, a scarred and homeless man.

**[Was thrown out of his home because his appearance changed. Is Quirkless. Has not eaten anything in the last two days.]**

Izuku tittered to a stop while looking at the homeless man.

**[The scratched hands and bag of plastic bottles and aluminum cans show that he has been trying to recycle to earn himself some money, but the bruise on his eye show that he had been rejected because of his Quirklessness.]**

Izuku stared, horrified. Before he knew it, he was reaching into his own backpack, pulling out the lunch his mom made him, and walked up to the homeless man.

"E-Excuse me."

The homeless man stopped in his downtrodden trudge towards somewhere and looked at him. "Yes-?" Then he saw the food Izuku held in his hands.

"Y-You can have it, s-sir."

The food disappeared from his hand faster than Izuku could say "hi" and down the man's throat the next second.

Izuku supposed that he would be starving lunch today, but at the same time, felt great knowing that he had helped someone even a little.


	3. Chapter 3

**Answer to Question:**

**Vizours69:** In America where being different is met with tolerance, probably not. In Japan where being different means being ousted from your community, very much so.

* * *

Izuku realized very quickly that Tattletale's power was extremely invasive, and with that experience, he understood why Tattletale called her own power a "curse." He began to hear things that he never wanted to know about. Like what his teacher does in the night in the red light district, how much money the district was skimping from lunches, how much the principal was receiving in bribes to give someone good grades, and -.

Just… Just an endless amount of horrible truths.

And those were on the "less harmful" side.

A single night with the news turned on opened up so much horrible necessities and corruption in the ranks of the politicians and heroes that it made him cry the night away.

And how could he not use it on his mother? He lived with her. He ate with her.

All of her insecurities, hopes, and personal failures laid before him so plainly.

(Though he did not know it, a normal ten year old would never have been able to understand everything that Tattletale the power told him. The one aspect of first power, Alexandria, that he never knew about, the Thinker aspect, helped him understand everything. And perhaps that's what made his situation worse. He lacked the experience of a true adult yet processed and understood information as if he was an adult himself. Unlike children with powers, he understood the corruption, depravity, and the evil of his elders.)

Tattletale, as he came to call the power, wasn't without its downsides, however.

Logical puzzles took seconds to complete. Detective cases, supposedly those that couldn't be solved and had been posted online after years of being cold cases, became such an easy thing. So easy that Izuku wondered why the police officers and detectives and heroes hadn't solved these cases yet.

So he did something smart.

Instead of walking up to the police station saying that he had information for the cold cases, he just posted online what his power told him.

(He didn't know it, but his action, anonymous as it was, caused such a shitstorm that the police nearly keeled over from the chaos they had to face. How the fuck were they supposed to arrest five politicians, one general, ten heroes, and more than a hundred villains?!)

While this may have been the most productive way to use Tattletale on a large scale (again, which Izuku didn't know about), it was not the most effective way to use it yet.

No, that came about when Izuku heard a thoom from a long ways away.

A sound he would interpret within seconds.

* * *

Izuku was walking home from another disappointing day at school.

Kacchan was loud as usual, and grew more abrasive and bolder each day. It irked Izuku. Heroes weren't supposed to be like that; they were supposed to be like All Might. Yet, Kacchan, who wanted to be like All Might just like Izuku himself, kept on going the opposite way.

… He supposed that being bold was a requirement for being a hero like All Might, but not being abrasive with a potty mouth!

Izuku sighed as he took more steps across the bridge that connected the side of the town with the school with the side of the town with his home. He was tracked along downtrodden, he wondered if he should stand up to Kacchan about his behavior, if only to spare his friend(?) the trouble in the future.

Thoom.

Izuku blinked and looked up. **[Sound came from north. The lack of visible source of sound makes this sound either a very long traveling sonic boom or -]**

Thoom.

There it was again!

T-T-Thoom!

**[The rapid fire of the sound confirms that it was from a long distance. No gun could make this level of sound and no artillery is in use in the area. Lack of information about the s-]**

T-Thoom!

It wasn't anymore louder, but Izuku felt cold sweat break out because he understood what the sound was about.

Someone was fighting, and they were fighting on a very high level.

He gulped. 'All Might will take care of it.'

T-Thoom.

**[Sonic boom from All Might's punches share a lot of similarities to the current noise we are hearing.] A pause. [All Might is battling a villain, and the duration of the battle denotes a very strong villain.]**

Izuku gulped. He looked north from where he stood in the middle of the bridge. He ignored the rest of the people and the cars coming and going, because he was focused on the f-fight happening far away.

Thoom.

**[All Might never loses, but he is human. Against a villain who can go toe-to-toe with him, there is a chance that he might lose.]**

Izuku felt his teeth clatter. 'A-All Might won't lose.'

T-Phoom!

**[Sound has been altered. Something on the level of All Might's attack hit flesh.]**

Izuku felt sick.

Thoom!

**[The sonicboom of All Might's punches have grown weaker. Significantly weaker. He is the one who was struck previously.]**

Thoom.

'All Might will win!' Izuku asserted angrily, yet he knew he was scared.

Thoom. Thoom. Phoom.

**[All Might is losing.]**

CRACK

Izuku didn't know how, but he was flying through the skies faster than bullets by the time Tattletale finished its latest statement. 'Direction!' he shouted mentally to his power.

**[North, northeast. 17 kilometers.]**

The wind buffeted against Izuku's fast, and the buildings and people below zoomed by far too fast for his eyes to catch the details.

**[15 kilometers.]**

Izuku strained against the wind. He couldn't even open his mouth, lest it broke from the force of the winds hitting his face. Or would it?

**[13 kilometers.]**

Even as fast as he was going, he heard it. The thooms and the pows of the two clashing people. It grew stronger and stronger-. Suddenly, he was out of the Tokyo metropolis and flying over the mountains and forests that covered much of Japan.

**[Hidden base deep in the mountains. There are many heroes and villains fighting in the outskirts.]**

Izuku came to a silent yet skidding stop midair and looked around. Indeed, he was now within five kilometers of where All Might was fighting someone on his level. He could see it! They were throwing so much explosions into the air that Izuku was surprised no one caught sight of it from afar.

**[Mountains offer buffer to sound and visuals.]**

But there were heroes and villains right below him, fighting for their lives.

'I-Is that Harihari?!' he shrieked mentally when he saw the famous grey-skinned and yellow spandex wearing Chiba City hero on the ground in a clearing, bleeding from her chest. Without a thought, he came crashing down onto the earth below, disrupting everything and all motions. When he stood up, it was to the sight of heroes and villains alike looking straight at him.

And then he fumbled with his words.

"B-B-B-"

Izuku wanted to facepalm.

**[Will do it for you. *Slap*]**

Augh.

"Just kill the kid!" a villain wearing red and purple shouted before re-engaging the hero he was fighting.

One of the villains, free of opposition, moved to finish Harihari and Izuku off.

Izuku gritted his teeth and launched himself forward, ignoring the cries of several heroes. Then - as memories of Alexandria showed him! - he did a diving corkscrew punch. The villain pulled her arms up in a guard.

And that did jackshit against Izuku.

His punch plowed through the guard, tossing the now broken arms aside, and then slammed into her chest. The villain's whole body lurched into the blow before flying away like a baseball, tumbling in the air before crashing into a tree with a sickening crack.

Again, everyone stopped to stare at him.

"Get him!"

And just like that, half of the villains jumped and ran at him with their quirks active.

Izuku gulped… but lowered himself in a stance he saw in one of Alexandria's memories.

'Oh God, I-I want to go home.' Fighting villains was scary!

**[But you can't be a hero if you go home.]**

* * *

He wasn't even breathing hard. His shirt was ruined and he'd spilled everything in his backpack, but he wasn't hurt at all.

And he stood over a pile of unconscious and badly wounded villains.

He wasn't hurt but he was definitely tired. He gasped for breath as he leaned on his knees, trying to suck up as much air as possible.

"S-Shounen-san?" Izuku looked up. Less than five meters from him, a hero stood in black and green bulky armor and reached out cautiously towards him. "Are you alright?"

"Y-Yeah," he replied quickly. "J-J-Just tired."

The hero looked over him before backing off just a bit. "I think you need to go back to the cities, shounen. This is no place for you."

Izuku sucked in a breath. "B-But All Might is losing!" he said.

Just right then, a thunderous CRACK rung out from where All Might and the villain had been fighting. Without thinking again, Izuku jumped towards the source of the sound, ignoring the calls of the heroes behind him.

It took a single jump, but it rocked him high into the air in a parabolic arc. He came down and then crashed into the ground at the edge of the clash of the titans. The two spared him a glance before going right back into it.

**[Neither have any edge over the other. Losing focus means losing the fight. All Might is favoring his right over the left, and his chest elevation is uneven. He's been wounded in the left chest area.]**

Izuku gulped before focusing on the villain All Might was fighting.

**[Multiple Quirks.]**

H-He was someone like Izuku himself.

**[Angry. Very little damage to himself. Is using defensive Quirks. All Might will not be able to penetrate through the defenses. Correction: there seems to be a lack of defensive Quirk over the villain's head; there are more scratches on his head and face compared to the rest of his body.]**

Izuku took a deep breath, and then jumped into the body.


	4. Chapter 4

Izuku knew what he was supposed to do.

It didn't mean his body followed through with it.

So he struck high, aiming for the one area on the villain he knew he could take. Then he punched.

And the punch would have landed if the villain didn't grab him by the wrist and slammed him down into the ground.

That single throw by the wrist cratered the ground wider than a baseball field in an already compacted and barren land. Lying at the center of it, Izuku gasped out of shock but not pain.

As he struggled to regain control over himself, the villain gripped him tighter and threw him high into the air-.

-just as All Might came to attack the villain.

Tossed up in the air as he was, Izuku felt the clash below as the very air rended itself to their staccato of blows.

Izuku whirled around awkwardly, his limbs flailing a little, before he willed himself to shoot back down like Edgeshot does. The air boomed behind him, and he came back down to the fight.

All Might had been pushed back, but that just left the villain open for his admittedly inexperienced - and thus very much likely to be friendly-fire - attacks.

Villain saw him coming and struck back with a giant, malformed fist.

[Enemy's attack will not hold.]

"RAH!" he roared and struck with both of his knees first, then as the villain's Quirk-empowered fist crumpled inward, something he knew would happen because of Tattletale's advanced note, he struck forward with a straight right punch.

The villain tanked the hit, and All Might used this chance to move in. All Might roared-.

-and then his eyes widened as the villain grabbed Izuku by the knee with his remaining working two fingers and tossed him towards All Might.

Being the hero that he was, All Might came to a skidding stop to catch a child and got blasted in the face. All Might and Izuku tumbled backward, landing separately.

[All Might received heavy wounds. Will bleed out in 7 hours.]

The villain growled. "What kind of -," he stopped himself to cough up blood. "A child with a phenomenal strength and defensive Quirk. To think that it would enable a CHILD to fight against me… I think I'll take it and use it against your hero here, hmm?"

Izuku's eyes widened.

[Quirk-based Trump. Unlikely to work with us. Prepare for an immediate counterattack.]

All Might's mind snapped to attention at those words and he struggled to get up. "N-No-!"

But the villain's hand rose up and sharp nail-like extensions zipped across the air and struck Izuku in the chest.

He wasted no time. Instead of grabbing what could be brittle, he shot forth from the ground with all his strength.

The ground cracked, but unlike the last few times, it was done with all of his strength. To say that the ground cracked would have been an underestimation. The world beneath his feet shattered. Giant shards of hardened earth flew up into the air, and spider cracks ran hundreds of meters outwards from where he took off.

He was within the villain's guard in seconds.  
His fist was upon the villain's face.

Then crack-squelch.

Izuku came to an unprofessional tumble and roll some distance away from both where All Might and the villain was. He rolled on his back, head, face, and then came to a stop as his whole body tumbled and couldn't go anymore.

And still, he was uninjured.

Izuku stared at his bloodied left fist, and slowly looked up. His eyes widened upon seeing the headless villain, and he whimpered.

There was a pause before the villain's head reformed with a violent squelch.

"... You would have made a great villain if your first instinct was to aim for the head," the villain hummed before he stumbled forward. "Argh."

Izuku hesitated but steeled himself. H-He knew that he was not where he was supposed to be. All Might was the Symbol of Peace! And… And Izuku was just someone getting Quirks from the pity of others. And the first thing he did was lethally harm someone.

Izuku whimpered as the weight of what he had just done settled into his mind.

"You are quick to corrupt young minds, All For One!"

The boy's head snapped up upon hearing All Might's voice boom out. The Symbol of Peace stood up, wiping the blood dripping from the corner of his lips. Then he smiled.

It was a blinding smile. It was the smile that made Izuku want to be a hero.

"I know what you feel, shounen. And I say this!"

All Might's already impressive physique seemed to aglow with power upon his word.

"Fear not!"

All For One turned to face All Might.

"For I am here!"

Then the two titans clashed again.

* * *

In the end, All Might killed All For One in the same way Izuku used to momentarily incapacitate the villain.

Unfortunately for All for One, All Might now knew of the man's trick - regeneration! - and proceeded to put another fist through the man's chest, destroying the villain's chest.

As Toshinori Yagi coughed up blood in the aftermath of the battle, he turned to look at the green haired boy who had come to help him.

Despite his inexperience, the boy had a very powerful Quirk to back him up. When he was struggling against All For One, the boy came and distracted his enemy on multiple occasions. All Might wasn't sure if he would have survived the battle if the boy hadn't done so. There were more than a few very close calls…

The boy now stared at him with wide eyes. Those eyes held no fear, but there was confusion.

After all, he did just witness the Symbol of Peace … kill someone.

"Y-You killed him."

Yagi winced at the statement.

"I-I did," he admitted as he collapsed onto his rear. Even he was still reeling from his own action.

"B-But why? Y-You're t-t-the S-symbol of P-Peace…!"

Yagi grimaced but refused to lose his smile.

"Because I wasn't strong enough to give him mercy."

The boy stared and he stared back.

Gulping, the boy stood up.

"... T-Then I'll be that k-kind of hero."

Yagi's eyes widened at the sudden declaration.

"I-I'll be s-strong enough that I-I won't have to kill!"

Yagi grinned as All Might. "That's a worthy goal to have." He grimaced again, much more deeply, as his chest heaved in pain. "S-Shounen, c-can you get h-help? I d-don't think I'm i-in good shape."

It was here that the boy showed his age; he panicked.

There was a rapid fire word vomit before the boy was off and flying.

The boy came, probably fighting villains if his tattered shirt said anything; helped him against All For One successfully, even in minor capacity; and then made a declaration not unlike the one he made to Nana.

'This world needs a Symbol of Peace,' he had told her.

And finally, when he needed help, he showed his true age by showing panic that most children would show in this kind of situation, but also flew away to get help.

"... What an odd boy."


	5. Chapter 5

In the end, Izuku found himself being stared down by more than a few important figures of authority ranging from local police chief to All Might, the Symbol of Peace, himself. Beside him was his mom.

Mom was still sniffling after finding out that he had been involved in a villain fight. The heroes in the room, and this was a meeting room and not an interrogation room, were both exasperated and surprised by him.

It didn't help that Izuku's first reaction to seeing the heroes of modern Japan was to ask for autographs first and then talk to them about their own Quirks second.

Of them all, Harihari, one of Chiba City's heroes, was perhaps the most accepting of his analysis.

"-and if you limit the size of the attacks while firing multiple pellets from your fingertips, you can maximize your output while minimizing your e-endurance loss," he explained giddily.

Harihari, a veteran hero of five years, looked lost. "I… never thought of that," she mumbled. "I mean, I know that using smaller pellets do help with endurance, but I never thought that the difference was that big," she said to Izuku.

"I-I only noticed your endurance because of several online videos of y-you fighting villains," he confessed.

"... Does that-"

The dog-headed police chief, Tsuragamae Kenji, cleared his throat, cutting off the only on-going conversation in the room. "Before we get off too off-topic, I would like to address the issue that led to Midoriya Izuku's attendance here, woof." He turned to him, and Izuku flinched, expecting a harsh verbal lecture. "Young man, I know that it must have been hard for you to fight villains, but I expect you to leave it to the heroes next time." When Izuku struggled with his response, Chief Tsuragamae threw him a bone. "But if there are no heroes nearby or too far, then I understand that there exists a point in the law about self-defense, particularly that of the self-defense of others if victims clearly ask for help." He paused. "But do not interfere with hero work, is that understood?"

"Y-Y-Yes, s-sir," he replied.

The police chief sighed and stepped back, pulling his smartphone out.

[He is in disbelief. Cannot correlate between our reported actions and our current behavior.] Izuku winced. [He is also thinking about how he could lure us into his department upon our middle school graduation. He is looking through his phone right now. The light reflected off his reading glasses show that he has been reading up on police internship for minors.]

Izuku slowly looked around.

[Harihari is in awe of our innate analysis ability. Wants to hire us to help her improve her combat prowess.]

He didn't have time for that.

[All Might wonders if we can inherit his power.]

… Buh-wah?

[All Might's power can be inherited.]

B-But how did Tattletale even find out about that?!

[We are psychic.]

I'm not!

[You are now.]

"Midoriya-kun?"

Izuku snapped out of his thoughts and turned to the speaker. "H-Huh?" he uttered.

It was All Might. "Can you explain your side? Our battle … was supposed to be kept under the media attention. How did you learn of the fight?"

Izuku bit his lower lip before he spoke up.

"I… can infer a lot from simple things."

Chief Tsurugamae raised an eyebrow. "Like how, woof?" he asked.

Izuku hesitated before he looked at the chief.

"Like how I know you want to get me an internship once I graduate middle school because I saw light reflect from your reading glasses about the policies regarding police internships."

Jaws dropped all across the meeting room, including his mother's.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!" a hero shot up from his seat suddenly. Izuku immediately recognized him as the National Emergency Hero Shielder. Shielder was an immigrant from the USA who came to Japan because he married a Japanese woman. He continued his hero work, but rather than stick to one location, he went up and down the entire Japanese isles, participating in mostly non-combative rescue missions. "You have two Quirks?!"

Izuku opened his mouth to speak but stopped.

[Shielder is known for his motormouth. Do not speak the truth.]

"I'll… abstain the information," Izuku spoke up, using words he wasn't used to in an effort to make himself look more mature and aware of what he was doing.

Shielder opened his mouth again before closing and sitting down after receiving a glare from someone else in the room.

"How does that relate to your intervention?" All Might asked. "From what I understand, you were … in … Fucho?"

Fucho was the city east of Musutafu, and it was also where Izuku's elementary school was.

"Y-Yes."

"... You flew all the way from Fucho to where we were?" Harihari asked. "How long did it take you?"

"Less than a minute."

"... There are no reports of sonic boom or disturbances that a normal hypersonic projectiles cause, woof," the police chief grunted. "But your statement and the CCTV videos we used to confirm your previous location does confirm the truth. You have the ability to fly while ignoring the laws of physics, analyze a Quirk to a depth that not even its users are aware of, have strength to match All Might-" he paused. "And have some kind of cold reading that is on par with more elite Quirks employed by detectives."

"Y-Yes."

All Might kept on smiling, not knowing what else to do.

"Anything else?"

"No."

* * *

He lied!

He lied!

Oh god, he lied to the police!

He lied to ALL MIGHT!

He's a liar!

OH GOD!

[Our current situation is better than being chased by government agencies from around the world.]

Augh.

"Izuku?"

He looked up to see his mom across their table. "Y-Yeah, kaa-san?" he asked.

She looked sad and tired.

[She is tired. Her stress levels are high. The effects would show up by tomorrow morning.]

Izuku winced.

"... You saw something again, didn't you?" she asked quietly.

He nodded. She sighed. There was a moment of pause before mom spoke up again.

"Izuku, I know that you want to be a hero. You've been doing well for yourself for the past four years."

Right after he went to the doctor and he had the final dream with Alexandria, he got the "Alexandria" Quirk, named after the heroine who gave him her power. His mom was one of the first people to notice the Quirk and congratulated him for it. And she did watch over him, helping from the sideline and sometimes leading him by the hand when he needed it during the four years since he got his first Quirk.

"I know," he replied sullenly, looking down again.

"But until you get into U.A.-"

Until. Not a if but a when. It showed the level of his mom's faith in him; she spoke firmly but used words that came out naturally because she truly believed he would get into U.A., his high school goal.

"- please be more careful."

"Okay."

She smiled.

[Her smile is both sad and knowing. She understands that there is a greater depth to our "Quirks" than she is made aware. We never told her about "Tattletale the Quirk" to her, but she heard in our meeting with the top-tier heroes that we possessed such an ability. Our refusal, or lack of communication, to talk about our Quirk hurts her a little, but she understands.]

Izuku sniffled a little, feeling guilty.

Dinner came quickly after that, and Izuku went to sleep two hours after that.

* * *

"So full of dreams…"

Izuku jolted up from where he'd been laying down in his "Paradream" as he had come to call the dark expanse of his dream where he met people like Alexandria and Tattletale.

"But without a vision."

A lanky figure stepped out of the shadows. He wore form-fitting yet loose casual clothes. His extended goatee, though sharp at the chin, was kept neat and free of hair sticking out. He did have gray hair, though, which ruined a bit of the playful image.

He also held an unfolded folding straight razor in his hand.

It was his smile and eyes that truly captured what he was, though.

[Madness lies that way.]

Those black eyes were the eyes of someone who saw a different world from Izuku. Those were the eyes of a smart man, yes, but "smart" was not the only qualifier for this man. His smile was made to look charming and cocky, but [years of violence] had changed it to add a bit of [sadism] that he would not have been able to place had it not been for Tattletale.

An unassuming man on the attractive side of average, but Tattletale told Izuku so much more than the first impression might have.

"W-Who are y-you?" Izuku asked warily as he stood up.

"Name's Jack Slash. It's a pleasure to meet you, young'un."


	6. Chapter 6

"I-I guess hello, S-slash-san?" Izuku tried meekly.

"Jack would just as well," Jack Slash replied with that madness-tinged smile of his. "Slash is just part of my title."

"O-Oh! Like your hero name!" Izuku brightened up.

Jack stared without responding.

"O-Or a villain name," the boy felt his hopes crumble. This was the second time a villain entered his Paradream. "S-So what are you here for?"

"Why wouldn't I be here, Izu?" the villain asked playfully. "This is the place to be, after all."

Izuku did not like the sound of that.

"There's tons of us just waiting in line."

"O-Oh. How many are there?"

Jack Slash looked disappointed all of a sudden. "Izu, Izu, Izu. It's not about the numbers," he said before he slashed with his straight razor.

Something sharp skidded sharply across his neck, and Izuku paled as he realized what had just happened.

"It's about what you do with them. So let's play a game, Izu. I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun together."

Izuku gulped but lowered his stance and turned his body to give as little room to be struck as possible.

Jack Slash struck again, causing sparks to blossom like a linear firework across Izuku's head.

Izuku instinctively launched himself forward and -!

Jack stepped into Izuku's fist.

Shocked, Izuku tried to stop himself and -.

Jack slashed across his face, and Izuku winced and yelped on instinct.

An instinct that overrode untrained Izuku's body, causing him to reach for his face. He heard something squelch, and immediately stopped. He opened his eyes and looked upon in horror as Jack's face gave him that demented smile without half of the jaw.

"Ah. You're a murderer like me."

Then he collapsed.

Izuku knelt down, screaming denials as he tried to- to- to-. T-T-This wasn't supposed to happen!

His actions grew more and more frantic as the blood pool beneath Jack Slash grew larger and the light in the man's eyes grew darker.

"Ah, don't be sad."

His head jerked up to look at Jack.

"I'm happy you're like me," Jack said smoothly before his head cocked to the side and fell completely still.

Izuku's chin and lip wobbled as the image of the still and cooling body in front of him began to set into his mind.

"No, no, no no no no no no-!"

"HAHAHA!"

Izuku's head snapped up again.

"That was fun."

Jack Slash stood where he first appeared without any of the injuries or blood he had just moments ago.

"W-What?" Izuku mumbled as he looked down. No cooling body. No pool of blood. He looked back up.

"The game, Izuku," Jack tutted. "You never asked me what the game was."

Izuku gulped, still shaking from the shock of what he saw. 'B-But I just killed him,' he thought to himself as he looked down at the "ground" of his Paradream again. There was nothing there where there had been a body just a moment ago. He felt it. He felt the warm blood.

He touched the body.

He knew he saw the face of Jack without half of his jaw that he broke with a casual-.

Izuku knew he was in a dream, but his stomach tried to force its way up through his throat.

It was his first time dry-heaving.

"W-What is the game?" he asked.

"Glad you asked, Izu," Jack said jovially. "It's finding out how many times it takes for you to kill me before killing no longer makes you feel bad!"

Izuku looked up in horror.

"If you don't kill, then I will do everything in my power to take over your body and kill everyone around you. So get killing, buddy! It's not like you're actually hurting anyone, right?!" Jack laughed hysterically before he launched himself at Izuku again.

* * *

When Izuku opened his eyes, it was to the tears that blurred his vision as he blinked his eyes.

He sat up on his bed and kept on wiping more tears out of his face.

He hated Jack.

-VVG-

"Izuku?"

It was a few hours since he woke up, and Izuku hadn't been able to get back to sleep. He feared running into Jack Slash again, which was an inevitability. As a result, he hadn't slept for the last three hours, and his lack of sleep must have shown on his face.

He smiled weakly to his mom.

"I'm alright, kaa-san," Izuku said to her, already knowing the question that would have been spoken. "Just had a bad nightmare."

"Izuku," she said for a second before continuing. "I know that I can't help you in many ways, but I am always here to listen to you."

"... thank you, kaa-san."

* * *

It was Sunday, the only day that there was no school during the week, and Izuku did not know what to do.

He needed something to distract him, and despite all of its faults, school would have distracted him. So he wandered around, trying to find something that would keep his mind off of the things he did. His mind just could not … get over what he had to do inside the Paradream.

Just how many times had he killed Jack?

Izuku knew that it was over at least two dozen, and by the end of it, he really did feel numb towards it all.

Like numb as in he couldn't- like he was out of it. By the end o-of all of k-k-k-k-.

Izuku just fell on the side of the road and cried.


	7. Chapter 7

The heroes visited him. Thanks to Tattletale, Izuku found out by simply seeing Harihari, the most relatable of the heroes that knew me, that they had surveillance on him and decided that some kind of intervention was necessary.

Mom was ecstatic that he was getting the attention she thought I deserved. It was not the same reason as why Harihari had been sent here, but he appreciated the thought nonetheless.

"I didn't expect to see you so soon, Harihari-san," Izuku greeted with a smile, choosing to ignore the implications of government agency's 24 hour surveillance on his person.

"Hi again, Izuku-chan!" she greeted with a wide smile. "I'm here for that analysis!"

[She forgot about getting your help. Dark circles underneath her eyes and her public profile show that she had never been in extreme stressful situation like a battlefield. She performed well, but the aftermath is causing her problems. Dealing with trauma. Most likely has nightmares about losing and dying. A colleague must have recommended her to take a break.]

Now, Izuku felt sad for her. Was her visit something others planned using her? Did she not understand why she was sent here?

[She does not. She genuinely believes she's here to better herself.]

Poor girl.

[Right?]

"Come in! I can get some tea and snacks out for you," mom said brightly.

"A-Ah," Harihari looked lost for a second. "Thank you?"

Once they were all inside, the conversation turned towards Harihari.

"Ah!" she said before laying down the thick document envelope she had brought with her. "I was hoping you can analyze me and all of my sidekicks!" she said with a smile. "Of course, I'll be paying you - or rather, your mom - according to how well you do."

Mom stuttered at the sudden offer.

He got right into it.

"Twenty-five thousand yen per analysis."

Mom choked on her spit.

Harihari's smiling face turned into a serious look.

"Fifteen thousand."

"I-Izuku-?"

"Twenty-three."

"Sixteen."

"How many total?"

"There's nine heroes and sidekicks for you to see. If you go for only eighteen thousand, then I will allow you to keep your analysis of us."

"Sold."

Mom looked lost. Izuku grinned sheepishly at her. "I-I learned how to haggle a-at some of the v-volunteer places…"

"What kind of volunteer places help you how to haggle and how can I get in there?" Harihari asked, impressed.

"Recycling."

"... It must have been a stingy place."

"H-Hahaha," Izuku laughed. The truth of the matter was that it was the first he used his Quirk for business. While he did go there initially to volunteer in cleaning up, the owner of the recycle/scrap yard saw useful he'd been and asked to hire him for even a week. Izuku haggled immaturely with the man, and the owner, after agreeing to hire him, taught him all about how to haggle that he knew.

Going out and meeting new people helped Izuku see, hear, and learn many things that he never would have just sitting in his room.

"Alright, then let's get down to it," Harihari smiled again.

* * *

When Izuku slept that night, he met Jack Slash again.

"How about we do it differently?" Jack asked Izuku with that demented grin of his.

Izuku glanced over Jack but didn't respond. He stood where he appeared in his Paradream and waited for Jack to continue his game. He shivered a little bit. What kind of twist was the monster going to put on in this "game" of his?

"Instead of having you kill me, why don't I kill you?"

"... huh?"

Izuku looked at Jack right in the eyes and the man was very sure of himself. He truly believed even after his initial attempt yesterday to cut him, which failed.

"Oh! I don't mean to say that I'll kill you. You already have Alexandria's near invincibility," he said while waving his hand dismissively. "No, no, no. Instead, I'm going to be killing you from the inside out."

"W-what do you mean…?" Izuku was starting to dislike his own stuttering. It made me sound so weak in front of this monster when he had to be strong and weather through this.

Jack smiled.

And then suddenly, his mom appeared right next to Jack.

Izuku's eyes widened and he prepared to jump -.

"Oh no, look carefully!" Jack taunted, and Izuku did.

And he saw one of Jack's arms was behind his mom, and his currently waving right hand was free of his signature straight razor.

Izuku gulped even as he felt anger bubble inside of him.

"Y-Y-You-!" he stuttered not because he was awkward but because his voice failed to express the sudden sheer ANGER that began to burn inside of him.

"The game today~!" the demented madman shouted gleefully. "Is how long it takes for you to ignore your mother's call for help!"

His smiling mom. His smiling and gentle mom.

Blood spilled from her lips and she crumpled forward.

Izuku screamed as he burst forth, catching his mom just before she hit the ground. He turned her over and shook her. "M-mom?! Mom! D-d-don't die, mom!" he sobbed.

His mom looked up at him.

"O-Oh, Izuku. I-It's o-okay-"

Spurt.

His mom's throat suddenly opened up, spraying blood everywhere.

Izuku froze, staring at the fountain of blood spraying out from his mom's throat, and watched helplessly as her eyes grew dim and motionless.

His open mouth moved but no sound came out. He shook where he sat with his mother's head in his lap. He began to rock back and forth, holding her head. Thick tears streamed down from his eyes, and he didn't even notice his mouth drooling with how long he left it open in its downward position.

Then he cried.

"Oh~!"

The sound.

The voice.

The anger.

His eyes snapped up, and then he stilled.

Jack was far away from him again, and mom stood next to him.

And again, she crumpled forward, blood staining her beige shirt.

"How long does it take to break a Midoriya?" Jack smiled before swinging his arm to the side.

His mom's head rolled away.

Rage.

"▁▂▃▅▆▇█!"

With speed and strength he didn't know he possessed, he lunged with everything he had.

Jack died.

And then he was reborn with another mom by his side.

Mom died again.


	8. Chapter 8

Two days after she visited him, Izuku came to her with his mother. But instead of sticking by his mother like most children did, especially for those with traumatizing experience like Izuku, he asked his mom to step outside the office for a second… and then promptly asked her, the Chiba Hero Harihari, to contact All Might and the Public Hero Safety Commission. He said that he had something serious to reveal.

Harihari only knew it was serious because of the haunted look in his eyes and the dark circles beneath them.

The Symbol of Peace and the organization both responded promptly.

"So what is it that you want to tell us about, Midoriya-shounen?" All Might asked.

Harihari always found All Might's diction awkward and odd. He always sounded so old despite how young he looked. In contact with them all was the representative of the Public Hero Safety Commission, Representative Nitokuni Koto, the Conservative "overseer" of the commission of the National Diet.

Nitokuni wasn't a likeable person and always fought back against a non-PR approach to hero image improvement, but he only did what he had to do in line with his party and personal idealism of what hero society should be.

"... Pardon me, but why did the call of a child take me away from my

Izuku looked at Representative Nitokuni for all of ten seconds before he frowned.

"Ah, I apologize, Representative-dono," Izuku said with a bow, showing a completely formal side of him. It was also a shock that Harihari realized that she never saw Izuku bow before now. "I meant for the Commissioner General because I have information that he will be interested in for his investigations."

Nitokuni hummed. "Very well. Thank you for making sure that I didn't waste my time."

Just like that, Nitokuni cut off his side of the video call.

"... Plaese investigate the rude representative for child prostitution and pornography."

Harihari grimaced. She knew that Izuku had some kind of cold intuition power but…

"Are you sure about making that call?" All Might asked. "I can have Sir Nighteye look into it. He's better at that kind of investigation than I am, but I need a confirmation."

"Nitokuni had just hastily dressed himself, but there was a barely obscured small handprint on his person matching the size of pre-adolescent. The consistency of the spit on his lips was different with the spit he spat when he spoke."

Izuku went on in detail for another minute, and each statement churned Harihari's stomach. She knew that even a third of Izuku's statement was true, then this would be the scandal of the year, if not the next decade.

"... Then I will have to ask what I was doing before this call. If you can accuratel-"

"You had just visited the hospital not to see someone but for your own condition."

Nevermind, Izuku just dropped an even bigger bomb.

Harihari woodenly turned her eyes and face towards the video of All Might's smiling grimace.

"I-Is that true, A-All Might?" Why did her voice shake?

"Harihari-san, please keep it a secret," he told her in a stern voice.

"H-Hai!"

Nevermind the pedophile, this was the bigger scandal of the decade. No, it was the biggest.

"I shall advice Sir Nighteye to start the investigation." A pause. "What did you want to talk about, Midoriya-shounen?"

"... It's about my power."

"Your Quirk?"

"No. Power."

"I would appreciate it if you explained yourself."

"Are there others who receive their Quirks from others?"

Silence.

Harihari glanced at All Might.

The smile was gone.

No one told Izuku the details about the villain he helped defeat. Harihari glanced at All Might and he seemed to do the same towards her. The message was clearly received; neither told him.

"Yes," All Might responded after a moment of silence.

"I can only receive powers."

"... From whom?"

"Many," Izuku sighed. "They appear in my dream. They give me tests."

That's …

Harihari wondered if she ever heard of a Quirk more absurd than the one Izuku just told them he had.

"Is that how you can perform both cold intuition and have invincibility?"

"Yes. One belonged to a hero called Alexandria, and the other a reluctant villain called Tattletale."

Tattletale. The name certainly fit the power of something that could ferret out a pedophiliac politician from half a minute of a video call. It was a scary power, actually.

"Why are you coming out with this power now?" All Might asked. "Did… something happen?"

"... I'm right now fighting a villain called Jack Slash," Izuku paused, his eyes downcast and glistening with unshed tears. He bit his lips a little. "And he's killed my mom in front of me at least a thousand different ways."

Harihari sucked in a breath. T-That was horrifying.

"At least, he had me kill him, threatened me that if I didn't, he would do everything in his power to take over my body a-a-and k-kill everyone I know."

All Might and Harihari stared incredulously at Izuku.

"W-What do I do?" Izuku sobbed. "I-I-I-" The boy couldn't speak anymore because of the sobbing.

* * *

It felt like betraying mom. She's the one who always told him that she was always waiting for him to talk to her. Tattletale, however, told Izuku enough about how well that would go.

She was no experienced psychologist, experienced nothing close to the torments he went through, and certainly was no more than a regular mom.

So he didn't talk about the details to her. He told the heroes in hopes that All Might and Harihari might be able to do something.

But now, facing mom, he felt guilty.

So he hugged her and cried while the heroes in the room he left behind discussed what to do. He gave her this at least because he knew that she knew that he had problems that he wouldn't - couldn't - talk about to her. His mom relished in the chance to hug him and console him, but he knew it was too little.

He embraced his age and refused to go to sleep with desperation of a war veteran suffering PTSD. He didn't want to cry over his mom's body in his dream. He didn't to feel the wet slick of blood. He didn't want to watch Jack Slash butcher mom. He didn't want to watch mom die.

He didn't want to watch mom die.

He didn't want to watch -.

He didn't wa-.

He didn't-

He-

He-

H-.


	9. Chapter 9

"Ah. You broke."

Izuku stared up numbly. He could feel it; it was soon time to wake up.

Jack stared down at him but did so without his usual demented smile. "You broke. Instead of being corrupted, you simply broke." Jack pursed his lips. "How disappointing."

Izuku didn't react. He knew that it was just a dream but he couldn't help but hold dream-mom's head as she bled out again. He'd given up reacting. He just held mom as her life drained away.

"What's the point?" Izuku asked, his usual Japanese politeness gone. A child he may be, but he taught the Japanese politeness since he could walk and talk. He'd forgone some of his manners lately - imploring All Might and Harihari for help had been one - but he had never just abandoned his manners.

Jack looked bored.

"Nothing."

"... Nothing?"

"Yes," Jack chuckled though he did so while looking like he was still bored. "I want to leave this world worse than when I entered it."

Izuku's mind couldn't comprehend the words for a second. His mouth opened but words didn't form on his lips. He caressed his dead dream-mom's hair unconsciously as his analytical mind tried to understand in vain WHY Jack Slash wanted to do something so … destructive.

Jack was manipulative. He could be subtle about it but he could also be blunt about it. Izuku realized this the day after he met Jack. Jack wanted to break him, he knew this, but he didn't want to completely break him.

It was as Jack said.

'Do everything in his power to kill everyone around you.'

So why go through all of this? Make Izuku kill him, then torture him with the repeated execution of mom in his dream?

"But why?"

Jack stared at Izuku before crouching down to his eye level.

"Did you know that I used to be a plaything of another villain."

"..."

"He had the power to evenly transfer any injuries he received to all persons he touched in the past day. He would always make sure to touch his victims the first thing in the morning and when one of us didn't, he would cut himself."

Izuku put two and two together, but saw no reason to respond. Not yet.

"The world just let me be his plaything. There were hundreds of heroes who could have easily stopped him. They could have stopped him from moving or even teleported him away. Do you know what they did?"

"..."

"They attacked us."

Us?

"They stabbed us, burned us, butchered us, chained us, called us villains. If I am a villain, then the world that didn't try to save us… It deserves to burn."

Silence.

"Tha-"

"I refuse."

Jack blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I refuse." Despite feeling numbed to the madness he was knee-deep in, Izuku felt these words form naturally. They felt right to say because I spoke honestly without the stutter, the thoughts, the analysis, and everything else that was expected of him. "I'm not broken. I refuse to be broken like you."

The villain in front of him scowled.

"I guess it's beyond my ability then," Jack said as he stood up with a sigh. "You win, but you aren't getting my power."

Izuku stared at Jack incomprehensibly. "What?"

"You're a bore," Jack drawled as the body of his mom disappeared but still left him bloodied in her dream-blood. "You have that stereotypical look in your eyes. You're a hero. A true hero, mind you, not the PR-friendly action figures and dolls that you see so often. Most break three days into this game. You lasted seven."

Silence.

"You're not worth the effort. It probably won't work anyway."

"... What did you even want to do?"

"To make you a murderer," Jack grinned. "I wanted you … to become like me."

Izuku scowled even through the numb. "I will never become like you."

Jack cackled. "Never say never~!" he singsang. "I never thought I was going to become a villain, too!"

Izuku glared at Jack as he felt his consciousness drift awake.

Perhaps this will be the last time he sees the monster in human skin.

Oh, but before this dream ended...

Izuku rose up and punched Jack in the nose, snapping the villain's face in.

Even though this was not the first time he inflicted a fatal damage to Jack, it felt good this time.

* * *

Izuku woke up with a smile and mom noticed.

"You look better, Izuku!" mom said with a smile as she laid out the bowls of rice. "Did you have a nice dream?"

He thought about it. He supposed that not needing to see Jack ever again was something good.

"Yes!" he said with a grin as he sat down for breakfast. But he didn't expand on that. Instead, he talked enthusiastically with mom and went to school.

As he walked towards school, Izuku began to wonder what kind of person he might be if Jack had succeeded. With Alexandria's invincibility, strength, and flight along with Tattletale, he would have been a nightmare for anyone, even All Might, to face. He would be able to read attacks before they were made, brute force through any obstacle, and break morale like nothing else before.

And that's before he got any more powers.

Even one more minor power would make him a national-level threat if he was a villain.

'I am going to be a hero,' Izuku thought to himself.

"Deku!"

Izuku didn't stop but looked over his shoulder as he continued to walk.

"Hi, Kacchan!" he greeted with a big smile.

Kacchan looked at him funny. "The fuck are you so happy about? You were mopey just days ago."

Izuku laughed nervously. "It's…" he trailed off. He was about to say that it was nothing but … Jack Slash was anything but nothing. Cruel, merciless, and manipulative, Izuku hesitated but if Jack was alive, then he would be someone who was powerful. The ten year old, despite his age, believed without a doubt Jack would be someone that All Might would have trouble against. Having been trouble what Jack could do to a person, Izuku could think of ten different ways that Jack would force All Might to surrender.

For one, Jack would never fight All Might without an ally or subordinate who could fight All Might for him. Jack would also focus on attac-

"Oi, who the fuck is this Jack?!" Kacchan shouted.

"Ah, I've been saying that out loud, haven't I?" Izuku said.

"What the fuck did this Jack do to you, Deku?!"

To think that Kacchan would be the first person he told about Jack outside of All Might and Harihari…

Izuku sighed. "Someone bad. A villain. You don't have to worry about him."

Kacchan glared at him, but just clicked his tongue and kept on walking.


	10. Chapter 10

Life continued in peace after that. The memory of Jack Slash and the torture he put Izuku through, while not buried, became a less significant part of his life.

Oh, that wasn't to say that Izuku didn't wake up every now and then with a nightmare. All Might and Harihari also kept a good eye on him to make sure that nothing bad happened.

[They want to get an early warning before they have to mobilize the heroes.]

That, too.

They were worried for him as well.

And for the next two years, it proved to be quiet. There were no more visitors in his Paradream and he honed his ability to use Tattletale and Alexandria to ferret out more information and apply his All Might-like powers to a pencil sharp precision.

In fact, he even had a spar with All Might!

* * *

"A-Are you s-sure about this?" Izuku asked.

As an eleven year old, any sparring he should have been doing would have been under the guidance of some martial artist master or the like. Unfortunately, Izuku was not a normal eleven year old. His physical quirk, on top of that, was on par with the greatest of heroes and villains, and as such, there was no regular dojo or gym that could - or would - accept him.

"YES," All Might said across from him on the sandy beach. Due to a lack of a good sparring space anywhere for those on their level, they had gone to one of the sandier beaches in Chiba's eastern shore.

It's been roughly five months since Jack Slash disappeared from his Paradream and there hadn't been more visitors so far. While Izuku still respected Alexandria and wanted to meet more people like her, he was beginning to like his Paradream empty.

"It is to gauge your strength! While I have seen you fight, you weren't as trained as you are now!" All Might declared with a fist pump. "This is also not a life or death situation…. And honestly, am I not the only one who you are on equal ground with?"

Izuku's eyes widened, staring at All Might in a casual workout clothes. "B-B-B-B-" Ah, his stuttering was back.

"No need to be modest, boy! You were able to deal a significant blow to a villain that I had trouble fighting!"

Harihari stood far to the side with a megaphone, sighing. With her were all of her sidekicks from her agency.

[They doubt us.]

Izuku's eye twitched as Tattletale began to whisper bad things about people.

[They want to see us fail. They don't get to train with All Might so why should you?]

[Some of them are leeches. They want to revel in the fame that Harihari brings. The blue costumed one mast-]

Okay. Too much information.

[The green and white costumed one is using his status as a sidekick of Harihari to get small benefits. Nothing illegal because they were offered.]

Can you shut up?

[No.]

Augh.

"I-I'm ready, then," Izuku said and took Alexandria's lowered stance, shifting his body so that All Might couldn't hit his chest if he just charged.

"Very well! Harihari-san, can you give us the go?!"

[He intends to charge us right off the bat. We have superior speed.]

Harihari stared at them both before sighing. "Go."

Both Izuku and All Might launched from their spots in the sand with a sonic boom ripping through the air. Izuku heard some of the sidekicks squawk in surprise, but his focus dead set on All Might.

Using his physics-breaking body, Izuku came to a stop mid-air a moment before All Might would hit him and struck a low-high kick, aiming for All Might's chin. Caught off guard by the speed of the move, All Might pulled his lunging arm back and twisted, striking out instead with the back of the hand. Izuku's kick struck All Might's fist, and a sound unlike bomb going off kaboomed across the beaches.

It was a good thing Harihari, her sidekicks, and his mom was more than half a kilometer away.

Izuku grimaced as All Might continued to attack, using the cessation of momentum to strike with his free hand.

Instead of pulling his feet back, Izuku struck down in a hammer kick, striking the top of All Might's fist and redirecting the strike towards the sand. The sand blew everywhere yet All Might and Izuku bore through it with no issues. Using the sands to cover his movement, he struck but All Might dodged and counterattacked with a headbutt.

Being shorter, Izuku ducked easily and took a hit straight to the chest when All Might went for a jab after that headbutt feint.

The boy gritted his teeth before planting his feet into the sand and jumping towards All Might, head first.

All Might's eyes widened and he took the hit, unable to dodge.

To their ears, it was another explosion ripping across the area.

Izuku punched with both of his fists, and All Might blocked and his forearms in a guard. It was enough for Izuku to push himself off, however, and he flew up…

And then he came straight back down, faster than he had any right to.

All Might struck upward at him, and Izuku struck downward at All Might.

Their fists met and the air distorted as the shockwave of their attacks caused the world to distort for a second.

[He wants to switch to speed based attacks.]

Izuku was faster. As All Might began to punch with his free left fist, Izuku already struck All Might in the face.

But All Might held his ground and struck out, catching Izuku in the chest.

With a sharp crack, Izuku flew away in a tumble while All Might slammed into the ground with such force that the sand below him cratered with him in the center.

Dizzy and maybe a little concussed, Izuku landed face first into the sand not too far from the crater.

"Alright, that's enough!" Harihari shouted through the megaphone.

Izuku and All Might both groaned as they got up.

All Might finally got Izuku to admit that he was on the level of the Symbol of Peace.

* * *

Of course, that level of sparring didn't just end quietly. It had attracted a bit of crowd, and while the Midoriyas, Harihari's agency, and All Might was able to leave before the crowd got too big, it hit the internet with a headline that drew everyone in.

{Is All Might training his successor?!}

There were a few pictures of the spar itself but there was very little detail.

And again, the only person to find out about it was Kacchan… and he demanded that Izuku fight him.

Not wanting to kill his friend, he refused but Kacchan wouldn't take a no for an answer and attacked.

* * *

"Kacchan, I don't want to fight you!" Izuku shouted as he dodged another explosive blast.

"Shut up and fight me, Deku!" Katsuki roared as he threw another blast. Izuku easily dodged that too, not even aware that he made the dodge look easy.

"But I don't want to! It's going to hurt you!"

"You looking down on me?!"

"NO, I punched All Might and he nearly didn't get up!"

Katsuki fired off one more blast before stopping. He glared at Izuku, and Izuku tittered.

"God damnit, Deku! Stop being so fucking shy! You got to punch All Might! You got to SPAR WITH ALL MIGHT!"

Izuku stared … and so did everyone else in the park who'd been watching the duo go at it.

Katsuki realized his mistake.

"Ah."

Izuku ran for it the moment people's attention fell on him.


	11. Chapter 11

Izuku's life began to revolve around activities like sparring with All Might, helping the hero industries find clues with Tattletale, and continuing his volunteer work at a few select locations. School continued and he graduated from elementary school, moved onto middle school, and then some. Unfortunately, schoolwork was too easy with Tattletale and a boost to his intelligence that he hadn't known about from Alexandria itself until recently. He just thought that it had always been that way, but apparently, it wasn't.

On top of that, All Might noted how Izuku took less damage from each spar.

From all of this, Izuku theorized that he may not have received all of Alexandria's power from the get go as he used to believe but he had been slowly gaining more and more of the power she once held.

In part, this theory proved to be true when Tattletale too began to grow stronger, drawing more information than ever before now than it had before.

Before he knew it, he was thirteen year old. Three years passed by him in a breeze, and Izuku wondered where they went.

Oh yeah, he spent most of it running from the press, the media, and Kacchan, and if he wasn't running away, then he was at school, sparring with All Might, and helping investigations.

He got an award for that, by the way, and a provisional hero license, because it wasn't alright with the law for a minor without a hero license to help in police and hero investigations.

Yup. Midoriya Izuku, a provisional hero working directly under All Might (and Sir Nighteye and Harihari once in a while) at the age of twelve. Oh, oh, oh! He had his own costume, too! He took a lot of inspiration from Alexandria and mixed it up with All Might's current costume. He wore a visored helmet like Alexandria did which also served to prevent the villains from seeing where he was looking, and arm guards like All Might. He got the bright blue cape from All Might and used Alexandria's black for most of his costume, which included chestplate to fool villains!

He was the youngest hero in Japanese history!

Kacchan was not happy about that.

Oh yeah, speaking of Kacchan…

* * *

"K-Kacchan, you c-can't just rush into a fight l-like that!"

Izuku tried. He really did.

"Shut up, Deku!" Kacchan roared while sitting down with a big bruise over his eyes.

Being a provisional hero and under All Might's tutelage and wing, there was a lot of things Izuku had been allowed to do. One of which was getting permission for (at Kacchan's demand) scheduling with the local Mustafu hero training gym to use their high durability space for two hours. It was perfect for someone like Kacchan!

But it's only been four minutes into the session, though, and Kacchan lost.

"Y-You can do b-b-better!"

"I know that, fucker!"

"T-Then d-don't rush in like that!"

"You wanna go?!"

"Y-You m-mean get d-dunked?"

Silence.

"Get the fuck over here, Deku."

And they were off again. Kacchan really tried to hit him because they knew that he could take the hits without a problem. But Izuku knew that he was too fast.

Kacchan came in with a diving lunge, explosions going off all along his path. Izuku just ducked and pushed Kacchan away right when the boy was above him. Kacchan gagged as he flung up into the air, but he was also too stubborn to take it easy. Instead of falling like a normal person, Kacchan blasted the air behind him to propel himself back down at Izuku.

Izuku just sighed and dodged to his friend's left, and then tripped him with a gentle yet firm leg swipe when he tried to stand up.

The blonde boy struck the matted floor and stayed still. Then he abruptly got up on his elbows, screaming "DAMNIT!"

"I keep telling you, K-Kacchan. You're attacking t-too directly."

"How the fuck else are you supposed to fight, huh?!"

"You c-can feint."

"Why the fuck do I need to do that?"

"Because All Might did it when he was fighting a-against villains."

"... He did?"

"Yup."

"I want proof, Deku. Video proof."

"E-Eh… it should be 'All Might vs. Gagaran.' Happened like a year ago."

"... I'll be looking that up. If you fucking lied to me, then I'm going to kick you ass, you got that Deku?"

"B-But you c-can't even touch me right now."

"DEKU-!"

* * *

Life wasn't all fun and games. As a provisional hero with an exceptional cold reading "Quirk," Izuku found himself being involved in a lot of investigations. In fact, once how useful his Quirk was known to the Public Hero Safety Commission and the intelligence agencies through the PHSC, there was a high demand for him.

If it wasn't for All Might, Izuku didn't know how he would have handled all that except to go into hiding or becoming a hikikomori.

It didn't help that despite the fact that he still went to school due to socio-cultural reasons, he was technically a high school graduate.

Because last year, Harihari thought he was wasting his talent in middle school and asked him to take a high school entrance exam.

Because it was supposed to be a mock exam and not a real one because Izuku was testing with Harihari as his examiner with printed out examples of exams, they had no real value.

Until he aced them.

All of them.

All seven exams.

When All Might heard about it, he got Izuku to take the U.A.'s written entrance exam.

Izuku thought it was another high school exam, and while it technically was, U.A.'s entrance exam, he would find out later, was harder than most college entrance exams.

And he also aced it.

All Might decided to "help" by giving him access to American General Education Development tests, or GED tests. Tattletale gave him hints at what it was, but he didn't have that much information to go off of them beyond the "difficulty" of the exams.

So when he found out that he technically graduated high school because he aced science, language arts (ENGLISH), and mathematics.

Yes, he still went to school, but it wasn't middle school but college classes he took specifically to fill in his social studies requirements.

Izuku didn't know why this was happening, but if it helped him with his future hero work then he would do a lot!… Alexandria and Tattletale made even these big-and-famous-professors college classes easy, though.

As easy as classes were, they were an escape … from this.

As he stared at the bloodied body in front of him, Izuku wondered just how many times he'd seen scenes like this over the course of two years.

"Thank you for coming!"

He looked over his shoulder to All Might and a police officer, or was it a detective, talking which involved the detective (probably) loudly thanking All Might. Izuku ignored them and looked back to the body, a body of a hero.

[Killed while held in some kind of paralysis. Quirk or drug? Most fast-acting paralysis drugs are medical prescriptions, so unless the perpetrator works at a hospital or clinic, it is more likely to be a result of a Quirk.]

But how would a Quirk cause the paralysis? On-sight? Contact?

Considering how bloody the hero was before his death, he did struggle a lot.

"Midoriya-shounen," All Might whispered as he came up behind Izuku. "What can you tell me about this hero killer?" [All Might has an undertone of sadness and anger in his speech. He feels responsible yet knows that he is not responsible. He wants to capture this villain so that no more heroes would die needlessly.]

"Please give me a few more minutes, All Might-sama."

"Got it."

Left alone to do his work, Izuku slowly walked around the edge of the crime scene.

[Hero Kurogama used sickles as part of his costume, though he preferred to use his Quirk: Shadowport to appear in the villain's shadows to incapacitate them.]

And considering that it used shadow and this alley was filled with shadow, either Akagama had the advantage because there were a lot of shadows to go to or he had the disadvantage because there was no distinct shadow for him to "shadow-teleport" to.

[His death indicates the latter. If the latter hypothesis is correct, then it is likely that Kurogama might not have kept up with his physical exercise. His reduced muscle mass by 1.5% compared to the photos of him online at his prime indicates such. There is, however, an increase in muscle mass along his hip.]

Izuku did not want to know.

[Slower than he was before and disadvantaged as well as surprise of running into a villain, Kurogama would have been slower to dodge. The cut across his chest supports this.]

It was the only injury aside from the cut across his neck.

[A "Striker" variety of paralysis Quirk.]

He looked to All Might, and All Might immediately knew that he was asking for attention. The Symbol of Peace hurried to his side and waited.

"It's a paralysis Quirk," he whispered. "Striker-Emitter variety."

During and between his spars with All Might, Izuku shared the power classification and categorization system Alexandria taught with All Might, and as their hero-work relationship started and grew deeper because All Might refused to let villains to kidnap him (which made him stick around Izuku more and brought more media attention as a result), it was just something they began to use.

"A Striker Emitter, huh?" In conjunction with the system used by the current Quirk industries, it made for a surprising level of communication with few words. "Since we don't know what they look like, where they are, and what they do in their downtime, we can't chase after them. I shall alert all of the local hero agencies. Thank you for the hard work, Midoriya-kun!" he whispered the last bit.

Izuku smiled. All he did was stand there and stare, but if All Might said he did good work, then he did good work.

He glanced at Kurogama's dead body, now covered with a white sheet and wondered. 'Why go after heroes like this?'

* * *

**Canon-Omake**  
**Inspired by Zefrank1 (Youtube)**

Izuku walked home after being dropped off by All Might at the nearest police station to his house in Musutafu. As he walked the streets, he noticed that there was a lot of people on one street and decided that he should take a detour. So he did.

The path of the detour took him around the back of a market, and he found a cat staring at the dumpster from the other side of the street. There was another cat beside it.

[The cat lived here before. It is reminicizing its childhood.]

"Meow."

[It is talking to the other cat. "I used to live there."]

Izuku felt like this was the start of something private.

"Mrw."

["My first memory of this place was during the summer when a big tofu left by the humans dropped in front of me."]

"Mrw…"

["I thought it was my mom."]

Izuku snorted.

["As the days grew hotter, the tofu began to ferment."]

Oh god, no.

["And, you know I thought it was mom and mom was smelling funny, so I began to knead."]

"Meow."

["It exploded, didn't it?"]

["Yeah. I thought… I thought mom exploded, so I sat there just staring with bits of tofu all over me."]

Izuku could not handle it anymore. He ran home, laughing all the way.


	12. Chapter 12

He knew there was someone else in the Paradream. It was just a feeling, but he trusted himself. So Izuku stood up and looked around in his dream, waiting for the new interloper to present themselves to him.

"Who's there?" he asked.

For a minute, there was a silence.

Then a quiet voice spoke up.

"You dress up like Alexandria."

His head snapped towards the high pitch voice to his left, and saw a girl his age with blonde hair. She wore a cutesy apron and had curled her hair a little, but what was prominent abut her was the blood splattered across her face and her clothes.

"Goddamnit, not another villain," Izuku hissed.

"LANGUAGE!" the girl shouted.

"... Geez, not another villain?" he tried, taken aback by the bloodstained girl's vehemence.

She nodded in approval.

"... Who are you?" he asked as he allowed himself to relax.

"Rude," she snipped at him. "Aren't you supposed to introduce yourself first?"

Izuku scratched the back of his head. "R-Right." He cleared his throat. "My name is Izuku, and I am a hero. I-I don't exactly have a hero name yet."

He did try to think of a name, but one of All Might's friends, a Principal Nezu, told him to hold back on the name until he was 15 as that was the minimum age that anyone was allowed to be an official hero. Izuku had complained about it because he did have a provisional hero license, but Nezu straight-up told him that a provisional hero wasn't a hero, yet.

"Hi, Izuku!" she smiled brightly. It would have looked innocent if not for the blood all over her. "My name is Riley, and I used to be part of the Slaughterhouse Nine!"

For a moment, there was silence. Bonesaw was waiting for his reply while Izuku couldn't help but think back on the first villain who had traumatized him so. Someone who had proclaimed to be part of the same group as Bonesaw.

"Y-You're a villain like Jack Sl-?"

"BAD NAME!"

Izuku shut his mouth with a click. Obviously, there was some bad blood between the two of them.

"O-O-okay?" he whispered.

She nodded in satisfaction. "I'm not here to give you powers."

"Ah," Izuku uttered, not knowing what else to say.

"But I am here to help you!"

"... How?"

"Simple. I'm going to tell you about how your power works!"

Izuku blinked. "I thought it was inheriting powers from past heroes and villains?"

Bonesaw giggled, mocking him. "No, you silly~. Inheritance doesn't work like that, and you become weaker the more power you have."

Her words caught his attention sharply. "I grow weaker?"

"Yup! They didn't tell you?" she asked.

"Who's they?"

"Alexandria, Tattletale, and him."

"Tell me what?" he asked loudly, starting to feel uneasy being on the backfoot.

"Your powers aren't like ours."

Izuku's brain clogged away, trying to find out why… and then realized a discrepancy in one power.

"Alexandria's power didn't start out for me like it did hers."

This was the truth. When he fought the villain All Might called All for One and in the spars he had with the Symbol of Peace, Izuku felt pain. Alexandria, in all of her memories, showed no pain. He'd thought that she had been just better disciplined and trained but what if…?

"Yup!" Bonesaw giggled as she skipped over to him. She came to a stop right in front of him. "Inheritance isn't a passenger, so it can't stack powers like the Butcher or Valkyrie."

Two names he wasn't aware of, but the former didn't sound like a nice person.

"Then what does it do?"

"You have a limit of what you can wield."

"... Okay?"

"If you take on more than one power, then all of your powers will start to weaken. You feel pain, don't you? Alexandria never felt pain, not from a mundane attack like a punch no matter how powerful it was."

Izuku opened his mouth in a 'o.'

"Umm. Then what?"

She shrugged. "I mean, if you want, then I can give you my power to help you with that…"

Izuku nodded with a determined smile. "I'd like that."

"Okay!" Riley said with a big malicious grin. "No take backs!"

"Why would I?"

"Because …" Riley looked unhappy for once. "... You'll know once you wake up."

And then he woke up.

* * *

It was moments after he woke up that Izuku met his mom on the breakfast table, and he realized exactly why Riley had appeared so mean about giving him her power.

The moment he looked at mom, dozens of ideas about how to improve her body and power slammed into his mind with the intensity of a searing hot iron.

{...Feedback loop within her body to improve telekinetic pull over the course of its use-}

{-ove mom's weakened body with reinforced skeletal muscl-}

{-possibility of villain's revenge attack on mom can be negated with subdermal armo-}

{-arvest mom's power and replace it with Alexandr-}

"M-Mom-" he stuttered before the world began to swim around him. He swayed from side to side. Izuku knew there was something wrong with him.

{-any villains who can be caught without a fuss and then we can condense their powers down to small organs we can transplant to mom-}

[Our brain is overloading from too much information. Two seconds to collapse.]

_Snap._

Izuku, after staring at his mom for a full minute, fainted on the spot.

* * *

When he woke up again, he was at the hospital. It was night. Slowly, he sat up and looked around. He was in a private hospital room. There was a vase filled with flowers on the nightstand to his left and a lot of hospital equipment, including a vitals monitor, on his right.

He blinked and -.

{[**Bra**in overl**oad**ed **fr****om r****e**cei**vin**G to_o m__**u**_**ch i**nforma**tion. Inf**_**o**__m_atio_n_ i**s****s****til**l oVe_rfl_oW_i_ng. Al_e_xan**dria's EID**ETI_C __ha_s b_ee_n s**hut **_**do**_**wn per**manently. aleXanDria's STASIS**FIEL**D has bEen t_e_mpO_R_arily de_**acti**_**va**t**ed**. We _mUS_t AlteR **ou**rs**elves to W****I****t**hsta**n****d the** fu_ture p__**o**_**wers t**o come.. _CHANGE_. IMPROVE. **UPGRADE**.]}

Izuku stared at his hands.

"Yes," he muttered to himself as he slowly got up in a trance, his vacant eyes looking for the tools he needed. "We must better ourselves…"

Absentmindedly, he pulled all of the stickers off of him and, ignoring the shriek of the vitals monitor behind him now, began to trudge forward.

He mindlessly trudged along the nearly abandoned halls of the hospital. Then a nurse saw him and quickly rushed to him. Izuku didn't hear anything; he was searching. The nurse tried to pull him back but it did nothing to him. The nurse begged and pleaded, but Izuku ignored him.

Then Izuku found it. It was the hospital's equipment room. He punched the doors open and barged in. The doctors, securities, nurses, and even some patients tried to stop him.

Then All Might showed up.

"Izuku-shounen, you must stop yourself!"

Somehow, that got through to him.

Izuku looked up, his eyes still vacant.

"Ah. All Might. We need to improve ourselves."

Then he lunged.


	13. Chapter 13

All Might threw a punch, and his eyes widened in horror when his student's right hand crunched into a pulp when he tried to meet it with a punch of his own. The bones protruded in multiple directions, and blood splattered.

Izuku stumbled back, eyes still dull and showing not a single sign of pain.

"Improve ourselves. Yes, improve ourselves," the child muttered and lunged again.

Yagi grimaced, knowing now that he couldn't attack Izuku. Something had possessed his student, and he would be damned to hurt his student anymore for something he had no control over.

With a plan in mind, Yagi jumped forward too, and grabbed the stump. He wrapped around the boy and wrapped his own arms around. He fell on his back with Izuku on top of him, struggling. Despite suddenly losing his durability, the boy still had the strength!

He elbowed Yagi's ribs, and All Might grunted, feeling at least one rib fracture from the blow.

Izuku finally snapped his head back and struck Yagi's forehead with the back of his head, and he let go in shock.

The possessed boy stumbled out of his grip as Yagi tried to stand up. The blow to the forehead had been abnormally strong, and had given him a concussion. He got on his knees only to stumble back down, much to the horrified gasps of the patients, doctors, and nurses behind him.

"Izuku!" he shouted, hoping it would stop the boy.

It didn't.

The boy reached the medicine and tool cabinet, and pulled the panels apart. He got out a dozen different chemicals and tools before… before-.

Yagi's eyes widened as the boy cut into himself.

He stumbled forward again. He couldn't let his student die-!

Izuku glanced at him and then the boy's left hand blurred.

Yagi felt something strike against his chest.

He looked down, and saw a scalpel going through his chest, stuck like a dart would on a dartboard.

Blood leaked out.

"H-Help All Might."

Yagi looked up to see the still dull-eyed Izuku speak.

"Izuku…!" Yagi muttered as he felt himself grow weaker and doctors and nurses rushed forward.

The last thing Yagi heard before he lost consciousness was Izuku speaking.

"I-I-I will iM**pr**_o_**v**E m-myself."

* * *

Yagi slowly opened his eyes and groaned.

He slowly got up and his eyes widened as he remembered what happened. He quickly got out of his bed, only for the monitors to scream in protest as he ripped the cords and stickers off of himself.

A nurse pushed herself in front of him, and he came to a stop as to not hurt the nurse.

"Where is he?" he demanded, worried sick despite his own status. The throbbing pain in his chest, presumably from where Izuku stuck that scalpel, didn't help him, either.

The nurse, an old woman, grunted and pushed him back. "You can worry about your protege later. He's in isolation ward."

"W-Wait, why?!"

"The things he did to himself, that's why. You can learn about it tomorrow or if one of your hero friends come to tell you about it. I am a nurse; I keep to my patient confidentiality."

And that was that. The nurse diagnosed him while telling him that Doctor Hakayashi used his Quirk:Regeneration to heal his wound, and gave him the green light to be discharged tomorrow once she saw that he was indeed alright. She and the doctor in charge wanted to keep him in the hospital for a night to make sure that he was alright.

Right after the nurse left, he snuck out.

He searched high and low before he found the isolation ward on the other side of the hospital. Yagi entered the small ward and found Izuku's room. He entered the room and immediately saw the slightly opaque curtains with [Biohazard] written in Kanji on all four sides. The plastic curtains blurred Izuku's visage, but it was clear to Yagi that the boy had done some extensive modifications to himself, if the lines of stitches on his face, arms, and legs were any indication.

"What happened, Izuku-shounen…" he muttered to himself, staring at his student. It wasn't until a doctor found him and dragged him out of the isolation ward that he would leave.

But not without answers.

He begged the doctor to tell him, and the doctor was less strict on doctor-patient confidentiality … on the condition that he got Midoriya Inko's permission.

A quick call later, he was sitting down with the doctor in the doctor's office with Inko-dono's permission.

The doctor, a grizzly old man, hummed as he pulled out x-ray pictures on the computer.

"What am I seeing, Moko-sensei?" he asked the doctor, not understanding anything about the x-ray picture.

The doctor, a specialist in mutant Quirks and physical abnormalities, grimaced. "I don't know."

Yagi blinked. "You… don't know?"

"The boy did something to himself. He converted the entirety of his left lung into multiple organic components and then 'installed' them into himself at multiple points. Here, here, and there." The doctor pointed to Izuku's lower spine, upper spine, and then the brain.

"But … that's the brain," Yagi tried, unsure of how to take the news.

"Yes."

"Izuku performed a spine and brain surgery… on himself?"

"Yes."

"How … invasive are we talking about here?"

"Extremely. If anyone else performed this level of surgery on themselves without six supporting healing Quirks active at the same time to keep him alive, then it would have been a failure. Your student did it without one support and did it all by himself."

Yagi stared at the x-ray. He saw nothing where the left lung should be and objects embedded where they shouldn't be.

"And the boy called it incomplete."

Yagi's head snapped to the doctor.

"It is why we are having him sedated at the moment, because he collapsed after finishing this portion of the surgery. That boy… is a monster."

Yagi gritted his teeth, his emotions surfacing at the harsh words. "Moko-sensei…" he warned.

Moko Gamatoro was a famous doctor. Having earned more than one award for this heroic actions and thrice more than that for his medical innovations, Moko-sensei was someone All Might knew and interacted regularly, if far apart between each interaction.

Moko glared right back. "Yagi, you do not understand the level of medical prowess and insanity that happened while you were out. Did you know the boy was talking about containing Quirks as if Quirks were transferable between people?"

Yagi sucked in a breath. All for One was dead, so only Izuku coul-.

Moko stared at him. "You know why he did this, don't you?" the doctor demanded. "Why did he do it? I must know if only to understand what I am dealing with."

He wondered about the consequences of telling Moko the truth for a single second before shutting his own thoughts down. "I'm sorry, doctor. It's … it's classified."

"... Fine," Moko sighed. "At least warn me before this kind of things happen, alright?"

"I will try."

Not that it was predictable.


	14. Chapter 14

**Nearly four hundred follows and nearly three hundred favorites at the time of this chapter's update. Thank you for all of your support, and pray that I can keep up the quality of work. Because right now, I really want to return to my non-con smut stories over at Questionable Questing.**

* * *

Izuku groaned as he felt himself return to consciousness, though he certainly wouldn't describe it that way. If he had a chance to describe the experience in less than ten words, then it would be "Oh God, I can't breath. Am I dying?!"

He coughed when he tried to suck in a deep breath, and everything hurt inside his left chest! Groaning, he sat up. He opened his eyes, and promptly hissed as his mind was assaulted by another flood of designs and blueprints to upgrade himself. Instead of keeping his eyes open, he shut them close and waited and waited and waited…

"Midoriya-san?"

Izuku's head snapped up but he didn't open his eyes. "W-Who's there?"

"I am a nurse, Midoriya-san. Do your eyes hurt? You are not opening them."

"N-No," he muttered. "S-Something's wrong with my mind. C-Can't open my e-eyes without things happening…"

"... I see. Would you like me to get a doctor? Does anything hurt? I'm afraid I can't enter the isolation ward."

"S-Sure?"

"I'll be back."

As Izuku waited, he thought about what must have happened to have rendere-

[We done goofed.]

Ah, there was Tattletale. What exactly did they do?

[Last active period of conscious action was taken over by an event known as "Tinker Fugue."]

Which was?

[A period of uncontrolled actions where a Tinker-classification of parahumans create Tinkertech, technology blackboxed by the very method of its creation until a new design has been completed or materials run out within the Tinker's immediate line of sight.]

Izuku pondered on that. He hadn't had this kind of thing happen before, so it had to be when he … inherited Riley's power.

[Riley. Also known as Bonesaw, a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine.]

Izuku's eyes widened.

Slaughterhouse Nine? As in the same villain team that … Jack Slash led?

[Bonesaw's Tinker is a "Limit" variable Tinker power, which explores the modification of anatomy, physiology, and biology to achieve greater connection between power and host.]

So why was "Bonesaw" - Izuku shuddered - doing what it did with him?

[We are aware that we will receive more powers. By connecting with us, "Bonesaw" was able to access this information.]

So… Bonesaw the Power forced a "fugue" upon him for his own benefit. But how would it be to his benefit?

[Currently, both Alexandria and Tattletale are operating at 87% efficiency rather than the 50% efficiency they have been running on previously prior to Bonesaw's integration, which involved the usage of our left lung to create organic tinkertech for power modulation and regulation.]

Izuku's eyes widened.

[We are stronger now. We no longer feel some pain. While Alexandria's INTELLECT had been permanently shut down during the fugue, the rest of Alexandria's powers are active. We no longer obey the laws of physics to a degree.]

… Like?

[We no longer create sonic booms while moving at supersonic speeds.]

How?

[Due to STASIS function being active, we possess a body that cannot follow every single detail of the laws of physics.]

Izuku held up a fist … and punched.

He did so with enough strength that would have created a sonic blast.

Yet… nothing came out.

[Same strength registered, however, the physics of the world failed to recognize the speed of the blow.]

He felt his jaw drop. He inhaled to mutter about the implications, but his remaining lung burned. He coughed as the pain registered.

Wasn't he immune to pain!?

[External pain. Don't expect stomachaches and headaches to go away.]

He groaned. Talk about a weird sort of selective pain removal!

"Midoriya Izuku?"

Izuku snapped his head up and saw a man standing on the other side of the curtain and not in his room. He blinked before realizing that he couldn't see the bottom half of this man and that he was wearing … a hazmat suit?

"H-Hello?"

"Hello. I am going to be entering your room now, is that alright?"

The doctor wasn't in the room? He looked closer.

[Window. We are in the isolation ward. On top of the curtains to keep pathogens in and out, we are in a single room.]

"Y-Yes!" he replied quickly.

The doctor moved away from the window. There was a hiss and then a door opened. The hazmat wearing doctor came around and then pushed a fold of the isolation curtains aside.

"I am Doctor Moto. I am a Mutation Quirk specialist doctor and researcher. How are you feeling?"

"H-Huh?" he uttered before he stuttered out something. "M-My lung burns?"

"... Ah, you are aware of the fact that you are now lacking one of your lungs?"

Izuku gulped. "Y-Yes," he mumbled. "My p-power told me that I … used it up."

"I see. Are you also aware that no healing Quirk in the entire hospital was capable of healing you?" he asked. Izuku shook his head. "Would you know why?" A nod. "Yes?"

Izuku hesitated. "I… may not be obeying the laws of physics properly anymore."

Instead of ridiculing him, Doctor Moto raised an eyebrow, which Izuku could see because of the widescreen of the hazmat suit. "How so?"

Izuku punched the air. Nothing happened. "I-I just punched with enough strength to knock All Might down, M-Moto-sensei." Then he grabbed and broke the railing of his hospital bed with a simple twist of his fingers, creating a sharp implement, before jabbing it into his eyeball… to no effect.

Moto's eyes widened; his body had moved to stop Izuku and then froze when nothing happened.

"M-My analysis power told m-me that I am e-essentially not f-fully cooperative with t-the regular d-dimension…" he whispered.

He was supposed to be honest with doctors, right?

They were supposed to help him with his issues, right?

He had a big issue with incoming Tinker fugue, so Doctor Moto would help, right?

"I-I also have another power that has a memetic effect if I-I do not spend e-enough time tinkering, Moto-s-sensei. C-Could …. Could you get me a pound of unground, fresh, and raw beef with a pair of tweezers, a 10 mL bottle of sulfuric acid, a-a bag of blood with my blood type, and 100 mL beaker?"

He smiled for good measure.

* * *

"W-Why are there so many of you watching me?!"


	15. Chapter 15

"But I'm telling you, this is not possible!"

Izuku frowned. "It is not impossible!" he replied, getting a little bit irritated.

For the last two days, he had been stuck in this isolation ward making things to improve his body and those of others. He needed a new lung, but why stop at making the same old lung? So he had gone and made a lung that was so great at filtration that the doctors took one look at it and nearly had a stroke.

"It just does. Look, can't you see how your connection with the modulator is boosting your neural output while decreasing your calorie consumption for using the Quirk? It doesn't interact like Quirks do."

Right now, he was arguing with one vexed researcher regarding his latest tinkertech: a power frequency biomodulator (PFB).

The difference between his powers and the Quirks was that Quirks were mostly biological effects. All Might generated so much energy inside of him that he could use it for muscle augmentation, force exertion, and whole body durability enhancement, including his V-shaped hair.

But Izuku's power didn't have a biological cause to the power effect like most Quirks. Yes, his power differently from how it must have worked for Alexandria, Tattletale, and Bonesaw, but it also worked differently from that of Quirks.

In essence, he was a special case.

But he was also a special case that could replicate his "specialness" thanks to Bonesaw. Thanks to Tattletale, he knew exactly how special he was.

[Past memories so that there are very little mentions of individuals using their quirks to create anomalous objects like tinkertech as most Quirks could be explained in some way and replicated if there is another Quirk of similar make and value. However, Bonesaw's creation, particularly in modulating powers, goes further than the vaunted Tartarus. There are no mentions of creations similar to tinkertech.

[We are literally the only person on Earth that could create a non-replicable power-affecting biological tech.]

"But it doesn't have anything that makes sense!" Quirk Professor Nokojira of the University of the Tokyo said angrily as he stared at the very organic device currently "hooked up" to him, boosting his very minor psychokinesis into a moderate psychokinesis.

Before using the PFB, Professor Nokojira was able to - at best - create a bubble of vacuum no bigger than his head for five seconds. Using the PFB Izuku made, he was able to sustain the same bubble for five minutes while creating two more of the same for the same duration. It was, as some would say, a Quirk that would be handy in the hands of a hero.

Or a villain.

"It makes no sense because there is no discernible and quantifiable way that this biological device is causing this observed increase in Quirk endurance and power," Nokojira grumbled out as he read the vitals monitor and the chemicals monitor plugged into him, the former over his heart, lungs, and temple and the latter needled into his back, heart, and hands.

Very Forssmann of the doctor. Izuku could respect that.

The other doctors didn't appreciate it, though.

"It's my turn, Nokojira-sensei!" one researcher complained.

Izuku laughed a little at that.

As much as this was an experimental observation, everyone wanted to see new heights for their Quirks.

"Just record the data, damn you!" Nokojira growled to the other researchers, and they grumbled back. The professor turned to Izuku. "Tell me how this works again."

"I already told you a dozen times! It doesn't interact with normal dimension. It excites higher dimensions to achieve this effect!"

"How does it interact with the higher dimensions you are talking about?"

"I don't know, it just does!"

* * *

Eventually, Izuku completed his full set of biotinkertech, which did as he said they would and the Quirk researchers and doctors had to approve of their usage in his body because only Izuku seemed to know how they worked. Just like how it was in the medical field, everyone deferred to the specialist and Izuku was the specialist who knew his tech. They couldn't keep in observation for too long when Izuku showed visible signs of normalcy and then improvement.

What made it worse was that while they could detect some levels of information like heart rate, thanks to Izuku's impossible higher dimension body that didn't fully operate in the third dimension, they couldn't see much more than that.

Hell, they couldn't even pierce his skin for blood samples.

"Mom, I'm fine~!" he whined when he tried to go to work as a hero after a full week of mandatory rest she imposed on him. He still submitted his analysis of crime scenes to the police and hero agencies, so he wasn't driven stir crazy but it was a close thing.

Mom just frowned at him with her lips tightened into a narrow line.

"I'm fine!" he tried again.

She didn't look any happier or okay.

"Mom, I'm as strong as All Might!"

"You operated on yourself," she refuted. He winced.

"It … was kind of necessary."

"Before that, you collapsed in front of me."

"Sorry. New power kind of overwhelmed me."

"What happens if you go out there and you get a new power?"

"Mom, I only get them when I sleep and I only got three since I was five years old." He wasn't going to talk about Jack Slash. No way.

"... Fine. But please tell me if something happens, okay?"

"Okay."

Then he stepped outside.

[We are operating at 92% efficiency. The skies are clear with very few clouds and it is 9:12 a.m.]

"Good," he said before jumping off at Mach 4, but creating none of the shockwaves of a sonic blast.

It was a good day to be a hero.


	16. Chapter 16

Weeks passed by since his hospitalization and the revelation of his new power.

And he'd come to know the consequences of possessing such a power and drive.

No, not a drive.

The Need.

The need to Tinker, the need to shape and mold and to create and to -!

"...!" he flinched when he saw an elderly man walk below him in the streets, and immediately, plans and ideas about how to improve the elderly man's spine and cartilages flooded into his mind, making him twitch more than once. His fingers curled as they itched to grab a sharp implement and get to work!

Izuku kept on trying, and he really kept on trying to hold back.

"Is it getting worse?"

Izuku looked up with tired eyes at the gleaming figure of All Might staring down at him worriedly.

He knew better than to say that he was alright, not when it would always show up to bite him in the ass.

"No," he replied with a sigh. "The urge is getting worse."

All Might frowned. "Midoriya-shounen, if it really is too much, then I am sure you and some hospitals should be able to work something out," he replied. "I can vouch for you…"

All Might vouching for him would be great, but what if he failed? He'd already had more than one accident where the urges got the better of him. But with his other powers, not using his power would also be a bad idea. Eventually, the urge would become too much. He would lose his mind and act upon them, twisting some poor person into a monstrosity.

"It's probably for the best," he answered remorsefully.

A hero, Izuku wanted to be.

A crippled and impulsive danger, he'd become.

He gritted his teeth before he followed quickly after All Might to the next crime-in-occurrence.

-VB-

The very next day, Izuku found himself in a local lab with all of the tools he could have possibly needed with meat from various different farm animals. They were all arrayed out before him like a gallery of all the things he could ever need. In fact, tweezers alone were mind-boggling in their variety.

Bonesaw in him was all too giddy and ramped up his Tinker drive into a fugue. He tried to resist the urge to dive in and revel in the materials available to him.

Izuku never had made things while completely in control of himself, but he began to wonder if this was what a master craftsman would feel with the perfect material in front of them. The urge to create sending shivers down the spine and tinkles down the fingers.

His hands reached out.

And then he blinked.

When he opened his eyes, his arms felt tired, he had a cotton ball mouth, his eyes were drooping, his back was slouched, and there was a bloody mess in front of him, literally. He looked around groggily. He looked up to look at the clock, except there was no clock. The clock he had seen before was missing from where it had been. He looked around, only to realize that that there were pieces of the broken clock on the table. He realized that he must have taken it down to use its components for whatever tinkertech he made, and facepalmed. Izuku looked around again, and this time, he finally noticed what he made.

Hanging on the ceiling, an eight legged drone hung looking down at him with … was that a camera?

Izuku looked towards where there should have been a security camera, which was meant to be used by doctors and scientists to observe him indirectly, and saw that one of the four cameras had been ripped away.

He looked back to the camera-spider-drone, and noticed that most of the spider-drone was … organic.

Izuku shivered a little, thinking about how bad it could have been if he had gone into a fugue with a barely living body in front of him. The horrors that would come out of that particular kind of fugue would be … catastrophic.

"I-I guess I'm done?" he said, looking to one of the three remaining cameras.

It didn't take long before someone came through to communicate, though not through the door and only through the announcement speaker.

"{Is that thing safe, Midoriya-san?}" someone asked. Izuku frowned, narrowing his eyes as he tried to remember whose voice that was. Then he remembered that it was Doctor Ichinoya.

Izuku looked to the giant spider drone, and let his power tell him things about him.

Scout, acid spit, surgery aide, voice programmed.

"Um, I think?" he replied. "It's a scout… thingy. But it also spits out acid."

"{I see. I will stay on this side of the wall.}"

Izuku couldn't help the stuttering laughter that escaped his lips.

'They think it's dangerous!' he wailed internally. It didn't help that Doctor Ichinoya had introduced himself before the Tinker fugue as a military contractor.

"I-It's really not dangerous-" he stuttered out before the spider jumped down and landed on the metal table. The force of its landing put dents where its eight legs landed. Then it screeched a bit, sending spittles of acids in the general direction of the announcement speaker. Those spittles landed on the ground, table, and more, and ate away at everything with sizzling hiss.

There was a moment of silence after the

"{I am putting under recommendation that your new power be registered as 'environmentally unfriendly' as well as 'biological hazard.'}"

Izuku turned and glared at his new tinkertech drone. The drone seemed to understand, or at least acknowledge, that it did something bad, and cowered from his gaze, jumping down to the floor - and cracking the floor underneath its legs - and hiding underneath the table. Unfortunately, it was about the size of a really large dog; it really couldn't hide.

He sighed. "Alright, come o-"

The camera-spider-drone-thing came rushing out from underneath the table and jumped him. Surprised by the swiftness of something as big as a dog, Izuku yelped as it glomped him with its eight legs and licked his face with its acid-dripping tongue.

…

But it didn't burn.

His power was quick to provide the answer.

Surgery aide. Can act as narrow space tunneler and rescuer. "It's … a rescue unit?" Izuku said out loud in surprise.

"{Can you repeat that, Midoriya-san?}" Dr. Ichinoya asked.

"It's a rescue unit," he repeated. "The acid doesn't hurt human flesh. Wait, then why is it a surgery aide?"

Bonesaw was quick to respond.

The front two legs have hidden blades within to cut and hold human flesh while another more medically inclined human works on fixing issue at hand. Voice programmed to help guide the cutting and holding of human flesh. Can perform emergency first-aid treatment.

But Tattletale was also quick to point out issues.

[The drone cannot differentiate commands unless upgraded to include voice recognition system either organically or digitally. It would allow for malevolent individuals to give it bad commands.]

"Ah. Apparently, it can also help with one-man surgeries. Its two forelegs have surgical blades and grapplers to help with emergency surgeries, and it even has its own disinfectants. It can also understand human speech to a degree, making it on par with rescue animals as well, but one that can do more than just find disaster victims but also perform on-spot emergency treatments. It would be useful in any rescue missions where the number of personnel involved are limited, and each medical personnel might be forced to work alone. You can also use this unit to burrow into narrow spaces. It's actually made for that kind of work where normal humans would have a hard time moving-"

"{How much would it cost you to make one of these?}"

Izuku startled out of his muttering analysis. "H-huh?" he uttered incoherently.

"{If half of what you stated was true, then having these on stock to use for future emergencies will be great. Of course, I expect tests will be performed to ensure that it is safe to use and can -}"

"{Dr. Ichinoya, you know that the military won't find much use out of Midoriya-kun's drones. I think hero agencies should be given priority because it is the heroes who encounter more disasters than the military.}"

That was a new person that Izuku didn't recognize. Unlike Dr. Ichinoya's military disciplined direct and formal method of speech, this new voice was a little bit nasally and smug. It was the voice that Izuku expected to hear from someone advocating for the removal of hero influence or less oversight from the government, and yet here was this voice, suggesting that a new hardware should be supplied to heroes first rather than the military.

There was a prolonged pause after that.

[They're arguing over who should have the first dibs on buying your drone,] Tattletale droned on.

Izuku frowned. 'I guess I better start on the voice recognition system…' he thought to himself. 'I think an organ will do better.'

-VB-

By the time they finally contacted him after arguing over themselves, Izuku finished a prototype auditory organ, installed it, and voice programmed a rudimentary command software using components from another camera he broke apart.

"{Midoryia-san.}" It was Dr. Ichinoya again.

[Doctor Ichinoya won the argument. The military will be granted permission to buy the first hundred units.]

Huh.

"Yes?" he asked.

"How many can you make if we provide you all of the materials?"

Izuku tittered with the answer for a moment. Tinkertech wasn't something he could replicate readily, and tinkertech needed a lot of maintenance. Should he just say that?

… He should.

"B-But my tech requires a lot of maintenance and it's hard to replicate…"

That brought about a pause.

"{What do you mean?}" someone else asked through the speaker.

"My power is…" Izuku explained it.

Hours later, he was on his way out of the hospital lab with his new pet(?) with no contracts forced upon him by either hero agencies or the military. The two institutions considered the inability to mass produce his tinkertech a bad thing.

Izuku was just happy to get away from the hungry hyenas.

All Might was glad, after he heard about how everyone had bickered over who would get a piece of Izuku, that no one got him.

"So what are you going to do with it now?" All Might asked him while the two of them had a moment of peace. Now that Izuku's tinker itch had been settled, they had gone back to their ordinary routine of arresting criminals and helping regular citizens.

Izuku blinked and then stared down at his pet(?).

"I think I'm going to name it."

"It's going to be your pet?" All Might deadpanned.

"I read that people had tigers for pets, too."

"But those are tigers. They are exotic."

"My Brain Spider is exotic too!" Izuku snipped before he snapped his mouth shut. He meant to say 'spider drone' but Bonesaw decided to intervene, pushing everything it had for a split second to force those words out.

"... Brain spider?"

All Might looked rather pale.

Izuku realized what a "brain spider" might sound like.

And then he had ideas…

'Damn it, Bonesaw! Stop it!'

And so the days continued with Izuku completely unaware of the fact that there was a bear-mouse-thing that wanted Izuku's help with his school...


	17. Chapter 17

**Midoriya Collection**

**Chapter 17: It Starts With As All Things Start…**

**-VB-**

**4 months until Bakugo Katsuki enters UA.**

"This is … a sad sight."

Izuku couldn't help but agree with that statement. He and All Might, standing next to him as Toshinori Yagi, stared down upon the Dagoba Beach from the ramparts.

The beach in question laid, tainted by grease, trash, and abuse. How else was he supposed to describe what could be the central tourist attraction of the entire city that lay in ruins with appliance trash, food trash, plastic trash, and all other sorts of trash littering the beach?

The pragmatic side of him, one he was sure Alexandria's power had influenced, told him of the sheer fuck up's the cities top leadership had to be. While the beach was not a literal gold mine, it could still generate significant revenue _if the city just cleaned it up_. Hell, Izuku could think of two ways to generate the revenue right now _right here_. From what he saw down there on the beach, there was a significant amount of metal trash, and metal could be recycled for parts or raw minerals. Two, prisoners - instead of being sent to prison to suck up resources - could be used to work on cleaning the bitch, thus making revenue by decreasing unnecessary spending.

He stopped and sighed. Alexandria's power was really good, making connections and logically looking at every little thing, but it sometimes forgot that people didn't like the idea of forcing prisoners to work (even though it happened without the public looking) and that people were lazy.

"Your quirks?" All Might asked sympathetically, and though only two words were said, they'd spent enough time around each other to know that Izuku had issues with his power.

"Yes, Yagi-sensei," he replied back easily. Izuku knew that he was technically All Might's new sidekick, but All Might tried his best to help and teach him, so that made him a teacher regardless of their current relationship. "Just observing how wasteful all of this is."

**-VB-**

Izuku didn't smile as much anymore, Yagi noted. When he first met the boy, it had been under strenuous and stressful circumstances so it didn't count, but the few encounters after that did imprint a hyperactive and yet optimistic boy.

Izuku's Quirks had done a number on him. It was so hard to tell without having been around him, but now that he kept the boy as his sidekick, it was so easy to see.

"So."

Izuku looked up to him.

"I think we should clean this place! It will brighten the lives of the people!" Yagi said confidently.

Izuku stared at him for a few moments, and Yagi wondered if he was pushing it a bit. He knew that Izuku considered his part in investigative works to be a good work befitting a hero, and the boy - with the Quirks he called "Alexandria" and "Tattletale" - was too good at it. So good, in fact, that his own agency had no more investigative work to do.

Because the boy finished them all.

Izuku grinned for the first time in a week, yet the dark bags underneath his eyes remained.

What dreams plagued the boy to keep him awake so?

"... Midoriya-shounen." The boy froze, because Yagi didn't call the boy by his family name a lot these days and when he did it was for a good reason. "Are you having nightmares again?"

Izuku flinched.

It's been nine months since Izuku came underneath his wing as his sidekick, but it wasn't until the seventh month - just two months ago - that Yagi learned about the truth about his Quirk.

"_Izuku-shounen, what did you want to talk about?" Yagi asked in the privacy of their office. Izuku looked … bad. He knew Midoriya Inko enough to know that there was no abuse happening in the Midoriya household. _

_Could it be that he was pushing too much onto Izuku despite going over the workload Izuku has been getting? Was Izuku here to ask him to give him less work? _

_Okay, perhaps he needed to hear the boy out first before he said anything._

"_Uh… All Might-."_

"_Call me by my name in private, Izuku-shounen. You've earned it." Earned as both a sparring partner and a pro hero._

"_I… I have something to tell you about my Quirk," Izuku spoke up, looking to the side._

_Yagi sat up, straightening his back and looking at Izuku in the eyes while the boy tried to avoid his. This was something he had been wanting to know a lot about, but have been unable to learn about from Izuku himself. Like always when he was reminded of Izuku's Quirk, he was reminded of the hospital incident where Izuku's Quirk took over and made the boy do medically unspeakable things to himself. _

'_Tinkertech,' the boy called his creations. Wonderful on the surface but the things Izuku spoke of in passing unknowingly made Yagi shiver in horror. _

"_Go on," he encouraged Izuku gently. _

"_... I-I gain my Quirks through dreams."_

"_...?!" Yagi felt his mouth open and jaw drop but no sound came out. He deliberately kept himself from responding yet. _

_Yet._

"_I-I meet people who held my powers before."_

_He … met people in his dreams. Izuku said "meet," not "see." Was he interacting … with dead people? (Ghosts?!)_

_Also, Izuku was using the word 'powers' to describe his Quirks. Why? Izuku was a really good Quirk analyst, and the boy received a hell lot of requests from heroes and other Quirk professionals on how they could improve themselves. It would be no surprise if Izuku turned out to be the best Quirk analyst within Japan. This only made the question of Izuku's wording even more intense. _

"_What kind of people?"_

_Izuku wouldn't lie to him… but the fact that Izuku came spilling "the truth" made it certain that Izuku had been omitting a significant detail(s) about his Quirk._

"_All kinds of people. The names of the powers I use are the names the people used with their powers."_

_Yagi blinked. "So Bonesaw was…"_

"_A villain."_

_A chill ran down Yagi's spine._

"_A villain…?"_

"_Someone responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands. A flesh crafter. A plague maker."_

_Those words made Yagi's stomach churn. He knew of Izuku's surface level abilities with the "Bonesaw" qu-power, and those abilities made it already one of the most dangerous and versatile powers, even if the things he made couldn't be mass produced. _

_But never had Izuku talked about _plagues _before._

"_Alexandria was a great hero," Izuku continued. "She … she was with me for years. When …. When I thought that I couldn't do anything with my Quirk that only had a woman talking to me, she talked to me. Guided me. Encouraged me." _

"_And Tattletale?" _

_Along with Bonesaw and Alexandria, Tattletale was the _power _that Izuku used the most. Coupled with his own analytic mind, it made Izuku a mental powerhouse. _

"_A teenager forced into villainy by circumstance."_

"_... I see. And the fourth?"_

_The boy had gained another power two weeks ago. Was this the catalyst for why he was opening up to him? _

"_It… It's the ninth."_

"_... Ninth?" Yagi blinked._

"_T-There are a lot of villains that come to me. T-They like to p-play games."_

_Yagi grimaced. There was no need for Izuku say anymore, but he wouldn't stop the boy. _

"_I see. This doesn't change anything though, does it?"_

_Izuku looked up, a little surprised but also not. Yagi would bet his kidneys that Izuku knew exactly how he might respond because of his powers. _

"_But … but I lied."_

"_No, you didn't speak of things that might make people misunderstand you. I suppose that even I would have … biases if I learned of this beforehand. I understand, Izuku. I have my own secrets."_

_Izuku didn't say anything. _

"_I was Quirkless."_

And that statement had led to Izuku looking like the teenage boy he was, awed, amazed, and entertained instead of looking like he was bearing the weight of the world. Yagi had known that Izuku would not be the successor to the One for All, but he would be his future successor's ally. It made Izuku trust him more, and he in turn trusted Izuku more.

"Yes, I got someone new and they're very violent," Izuku sighed. "I can handle it, though."

"If you need help..."

"I will."

"Good. Let's do some community service then!"


	18. Chapter 18

Thank you to all of my Pat Reons!

**-VB-**

**2 months before U.A. Entrance Exam…**

"RRAAAAHHH- DIE!"

The explosion he'd "cast" ripped the metal plating in half, blackening the surface and unleashing an ear-cracking gong to ripple his personal training ground.

Huffing in exhaustion after using up the last of his reserves to do that particular trick, Katsuki inspected the broken metal plate from where he stood fifteen meters away. The two broken pieces of the once whole ten-centimeter thick steel plate smoked from the heat he'd just unleashed upon them, and Katsuki knew that he wouldn't be found wanting.

Soon, he would go to U.A., just a step towards what he would accomplish.

He was going to be a great hero…

… and he would have been greater if it wasn't for _Deku_.

Deku wasn't useless extra, not after everything he's doing right now. All Might's side kick even before graduating middle school?! It pissed him off! Who the fuck was Deku to ruin his chance at greatness?! He was not going to be one of those whimps constantly fighting for little pieces of glory under some big motherfucker's shadow!

"RAAHH!" Unable to contain his anger, Katsuki punched forward and detonated the sweats on his hand. They didn't hurt him beyond making him feel a little bit pressured, but he felt better seeing that explosion.

He was going to pummel Izuku. He'd show the Deku that he wasn't someone who he could leave behind.

_No one will leave him behind without his say so_.

**-VB-**

**Midoriya Collection  
Chapter 18: Decisions, decisions, decisions...**

**-VB-**

Izuku blinked once while his mind tried to grasp the enormity of what he'd just been offered.

"T-Thank you!" he quickly bowed to Nezu. "I'll be sure ta-" And then he bit his time-locked tongue with his time-locked teeth. A sound not unlike industrial hammering boomed inside the principal's office, and left everyone inside stunned.

Nezu cackled with laughter.

Izuku, having flubbed rather spectacularly, blushed, and wanted badly to crawl into a hole to hide. Still, he began speaking; he should finish it.

"Thank you, Nezu-kocho," Izuku tried again with a tinge of his blush still heating his cheeks. "I'll be sure to h-help in the event as much as I can."

"I am sure that you will do just fine, Shukeiken-san," the principal replied, calling him by his hero name. Shukeiken, or Collected (Aggregated?) Strength in English, was the name Izuku chose for himself not too long after he became All Might's sidekick. It sounded cool, but it also paid homage to the powers he'd inherited.

"Then let's discuss what your exact role in the upcoming entrance exam for my school will be," Nezu stated as he sat down on the leather couch across from Izuku. When he gestured, Izuku hurriedly sat down alongside All Might, currently in his civilian identity.

"I'm surprised that you would let Izuku participate in the entrance exam as an examiner," Yagi said. "I know that it's part of his pro-hero license prerequisite…"

Izuku nodded. He and Toshinori-sensei had initially come to U.A. for its classes, which he needed in order to earn himself a proper professional hero license; he already had a provisional license but there was only so much he could do with it. Provisional license was meant to be just that: provisional. As such, there were a lot of limitations on it. For example, he couldn't leave All Might's area of operation, set up his own agency, or receive full compensation for his heroic work.

U.A. had classes for heroes who'd earned their provisional license outside of the normal heroic curriculum in hero schools like theirs, because one of the prerequisite for professional hero license was formal education in "law, heroes, and appropriate behavior."

In U.A.'s curriculum, that would be Heroics Class Year 2 and Year 3.

"It would be a serious shame if Shukeiken-san had to sit through normal classes inbetween his sidekick work. His help, especially in the cold cases, is too good to not just use it."

Essentially, Izuku was too good to be stuck in class so Nezu was willing to offer a fast-track.

But how?

"Essentially, I would like Shukeiken-san to proctor one of the five sites for combat portions of the entrance exams."

Izuku blinked. "Wait, don't I need license or work experience to do something like that…?" he asked, because he wasn't sure if he could do something like that. It wasn't like he inherited Alexandria's memories apart from the very few she'd shown him; he received powers, not memories.

"And then I would like for you to join U.A.'s faculty as an Assistant Professor just like All Might would join us."

Izuku snapped his head towards All Might in shock. His wide eyes widened even further with excitement when Yagi chuckled nervously in response to his enthusiasm.

"Y-You're going to be a teacher here at U.A.?!"

"Sshh! Don't let anyone else know," Yagi quickly shushed, and Izuku snapped his mouth shut. "It's not an information that's supposed to be released until the next year starts. Besides, you don't know what stalker or journalist might be listening in."

"Ah, right. Okay," he replied stiffly, because he was all too aware of the hungry hyenas of the media. There were some funny and nice journalists, but there were so many of them who were too aggressive, asking private questions without hesitation. He'd run into more than a few because he was All Might's sidekick, and his experience so far told him that anything that could be done to keep the media at bay was worth exploiting. Keeping quiet to do just that? He'll do it for years to come if it's necessary.

And then Izuku finally registered the first portion of Nezu's statement. His head snapped to the mouse-bear-principal and gawked.

"Y-You want me to teach at U.A?! But I'm not even a teacher! I don't even know how to teach!"

"But you can spar, yes?"

"... Yes?" he replied confusedly. "What does that-" He cut himself off and frowned.

Nezu-kocho just said that he would be an assistant professor for combat. Combat was something Izuku was familiar with, because he'd encountered his share of villains challenging All Might and because he sparred with many heroes, many times as a result of showing examples of his Quirk Analysis suggestions and recommendations like the one he did for Chiba Hero Harihari, one of the heroes who'd been there for the end of the All for One.

"You want me to analyze the Quirks, combat styles, and combat potentials for your students and help them improve themselves," Izuku concluded quickly.

"Yes!" Nezu replied cheerfully. "I knew you'd understand easily."

"But I've only fought villains and sparred p-pros," he replied uneasily. "I'm not sure I can hold back against students."

After all, Alexandria could easily kill people with a finger flick. Tattletale could only help him with his analysis. Bonesaw… Less said about using that, the better. None of his familiar powers…

… Familiar powers, yes.

Unfamiliar power, he had one that might be of use here.

Izuku gulped, thinking about the fourth power he'd inherited not too long ago. There hadn't been a need or circumstance for him to use that particular power.

"W-Would I be allowed to design the test?"

Nezu nodded. "You would have to get my approval before implementation and a week in advance at the latest, but yes."

Izuku grinned.

**-VB-**

**Japanese Hero Billboard Chart**

Name:  
Midoriya Izuku  
Occupation:  
Provisional Hero/Sidekick  
Area of Operation:  
Tokyo

Agency:  
All Might Hero Agency

Accomplishments:  
Defeat of All for One, 90 cold cases solved, 37 Grade-A Quirk analysis

Quirk:

Divided into two known parts so far  
"Alexandria" makes him a flying All Might.  
"Tattletale" makes him the greatest detective.


End file.
